Matt Cardona underwent surgery on August 25 to repair a torn triceps and said he plans to return sooner than his surgeon told him he would. He also said the injury has not changed his goal of winning the WWE Championship.
Cardona laid out in a video posted to Instagram. He said the problem started two weeks earlier, in his impromptu match with Gunther on the August 14 episode of SmackDown. That match came out of a segment involving Gunther, Cardona’s wife Chelsea Green and SmackDown General Manager Nick Aldis. Cardona wrestled it in street clothes with no elbow pads and lost.
The elbow bothered him afterward, and he said it was still bothering him in the gym the following week. He did not think much of it at the time. Then came the August 21 Main Event taping at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, held before that night’s SmackDown, where he faced Kit Wilson.
“And then last Friday, I was wrestling Kit Wilson, and in the first minute or so I did a second rope dropkick, landed on my elbow like I do almost every match, and I felt a pop,” he said. “And I thought there’s no way I hurt my elbow on a dropkick.”
Cardona said he clotheslined Wilson over the top rope and that it felt wrong as well. He knew for certain when he went for his baseball slide dropkick and had no strength in the arm holding the ropes. He finished the match and won it. He announced the tear publicly on August 23 in a post on X, writing that his arm was swollen and that he was not finished.
The timing is the part he said bothers him most. Cardona re-signed with WWE on the January 2 episode of SmackDown and has been on the roster since without settling into a defined role. He said the Gunther angle was the first sign in seven months that his position might change.
“It just sucks getting hurt now when I’m still figuring out who Matt Cardona is in WWE. I must be honest, I’m not getting any younger right, I’m 41,” he said. “I don’t want to sit home. I don’t want to sit and collect a check. I don’t want to have a vacation. I want to be in the ring, I want to be wrestling.”
Cardona said he came back to WWE to win the world title and that the surgery does not change that.
“I’ll be back faster than the surgeon said. And I’m coming back to be the WWE Champion or I’m gonna die trying,” he said.
He did not give a return date. He referred to three, five and six months as the kind of absence that is hard to give up at 41, but did not say which applies to him. WWE has not commented on the injury and has not announced a timetable.
This is the second time this year Cardona has been hurt at a Main Event taping. He needed multiple staples to close a cut on his head after a tag match taped before the March 13 episode of SmackDown in Phoenix, and he did not appear on SmackDown that night. Those matches are taped ahead of SmackDown and are not part of the main broadcast.
Cardona addressed his win-loss record publicly in May, saying that losing matches was not going to stop him. His win over Wilson on August 21 is one of a small number he has picked up since returning.
Green is the reigning Interim WWE Women’s Champion and has been working through a broken orbital bone suffered on the August 7 episode of SmackDown. Rather than strip her of the title, Aldis gave her 30 days to defend it, and she has continued to appear on television through the injury.
Cardona has handled every stage of this himself so far. He posted the initial reveal on X, the hospital photo after surgery, and now the video, and he has said he will keep people updated.
