Matthew Cardona, or Zack Ryder, between 2007 and 2020 was in WWE, a federation in which he won the WWE Tag Team Championship twice and the WWE Intercontinental Championship and the WWE United States Championship once. In high school he had a tumor in his foot, but after several treatments and operations he managed to heal.

Matthew Cardona made his professional wrestling debut in the summer of 2005, wrestling for the New York Wrestling Connection under the ring name Brett Matthews. He later began dating Brian Myers; the two won the NYWC Tag Team Championship twice. On February 24, 2006, he signed a developmental deal with World Wrestling Entertainment.

On October 19, 2010 Zack Ryder created a YouTube account called LongIslandIcedZ, and on February 17, 2011 he uploaded the first episode of Z! True Long Island Story, a sort of show lasting an average of 5 minutes, along the lines of those made by the official WWE website, with the difference that Z! True Long Island Story is written solely by Ryder and is in no way a product of the Stamford-based company, although several personalities linked to the WWE environment make occasional appearances and cameos, such as Scott Stanford, John Cena or former tag -team partner Curt Hawkins.

In December 2021, he married fellow wrestler Chelsea Green, to whom he had been engaged for a long time.