What Zack Ryder’s WWE return means for his collectibles market
In the lead up to John Cena’s last wrestling appearance, WWE announced that a tournament would be taking place to determine who the last opponent was. As part of the announcement WWE let fans know that there would be a few surprise wrestlers from outside of the WWE locker room participating in the tournament. One mystery participant who was revealed was The First Gentleman of Professional Wrestling Zack Ryder who had been competing in the independent wrestling scene under his real name Matt Cardona.
RELATED: What Matt Cardona’s WWE/NXT return means for collectors
While Cardona had wrestled once under his real name on the main roster, his match on Smackdown under his former alias of Zack Ryder marked his first main roster match in over five years. As I discussed in a previous article, Ryder/Cardona, continued to make a name for himself by appearing in various independent promotions including GCW and TNA wrestling. During that time, Ryder/Cardona continued to expand his merchandising and collectibles partnership with companies such as Super 7 who made collectible action figures of the star.
What this means for collectors: Again, this appears to be an extremely positive development for Ryder/Cardona fans and collectors. After making his return to Smackdown, Ryder/Cardona had an interview with Sam Roberts to discuss his return. During the interview, Cardona stated that while a full time contract had not been signed yet, he had given WWE permission to use his likeness for future merchandise including t-shirts that were already for sale on the WWE website, as well as collectible action figures through Mattel. Cardona also mentioned that the merchandising agreement included trading cards with Topps. Almost immediately after that interview, Topps released a Topps Now set to celebrate Ryder’s return to Smackdown. The set featured the standard foilfractor parallels but did not have autograph redemptions. Hopefully, Ryder/Cardona will have autographs in future WWE Topps products.
As I talked about in a previous article and alluded to earlier, the First Gentleman of Wrestling Zack Ryder/Matt Cardona has made himself into an even bigger star outside of WWE and that’s the product of hustle and hard work. He’s put on quality matches across the independent wrestling scene for the past five years while also creating great collectibles along the way. Hopefully this expanded partnership with WWE will lead to a longer term deal for Cardona, one that he has certainly earned.
