Zack Ryder (real name Matt Cardona) was released from WWE last month. He first signed with the company in February of 2006. In his time with WWE, Ryder won the Intercontinental and United States titles once and the tag team titles twice. He spoke with Chris Van Vliet recently about his release from the company.

Ryder spoke about how the morning of his release, WWE talents were sent a video from Vince McMahon.

“It was a video from Vince McMahon talking about the state of the company and the state of the world and basically saying layoffs would be coming,” Ryder said.

He then continued to say after seeing the video, he felt it was likely that he would be one of the ones let go.

“I’m a smart guy, I’m like ok, prowrestlingtees.com/mattcardona let’s set it up right now,” he said. “I already had it set up, I had my logo guys making logos, ProWrestlingTees making logos for me, I knew it was coming. I mean, I didn’t know but I had a pretty good idea.”

He continued to talk about how for the last year he had been in negotiations with WWE over renewing his contract.

“My contract would have been up in August, I had never resigned,” he continued. “For about over a year we had been in contract negotiations and the anxiety that I was living with ‘do I stay, do I go?’ I grew up wanting to be a WWE Superstar, of course, but my career has been up and down, up and down, and with all the new opportunities out there, do I really want to stay here or go somewhere else?”

“When the decision was made for me? Oh my god, it was like ‘thank you!'” he continued. “Instantly relieved.”

Ryder’s comments can be heard in the player below: