Report: Reaction To Matt Cardona's GCW Title Win Was Planned

The wrestling world is still reeling from last weekend’s Game Changer Wrestling shows, were Matt Cardona shockingly defeated Nick Gage in a deathmatch to win the GCW World Championship.

After his victory, Cardona celebrated with the title as GCW fans utterly pelted him with drinks, bottles, debris, and even pizza cutters in images that went viral in the wrestling world.

Now, according to Dave Meltzer in The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, this shower of debris wasn’t an off-the-cuff moment, but was planned by GCW themselves.

“Putting Cardona over got a ton of talk,” wrote Meltzer “They created a scene with all kinds of bottles thrown in the ring and put it out over social media after Cardona won to show he got over the top heat. The actual thing was planned by the promotion in the sense they used people who were backstage to come out and throw empty water bottles at Cardona first, to set up the mob mentality where fans started throwing things at him. For the most part, they also threw empty water bottles that weren’t going to hurt anyone but there were exceptions and when you create a mob mentality and encourage fans to throw things people can get hurt needlessly as has happened countless times. Most of the crowd was fine in the sense they threw stuff to throw stuff, being part of the show and knowing it. But there were full beer cans and pizza cutters thrown as well that luckily didn’t hit anyone. It only takes one idiot in a mob scene with bad aim to hit the wrong person, which is why even WCW, which thought it was cool at Bash at the Beach and promoted it, changed their tune later when fans were hit and more dangerous objects started being thrown. Eric Bischoff made sure they did nothing to promote that stuff happening from there.

“It was noted that once the scene ended and Cardona left the ring, it wasn’t like people continued to throw stuff at him because the vast majority of the fans knew the game. But it only takes one person throwing the wrong thing and historically these things usually end up injuring fans at ringside from bad throws. Actually there are a lot crazier spots the wrestlers do on every show that are higher risk, but encouraging fans to throw things does make people nostalgic for the NWO deal at Bash at the Beach or the Terry Funk open of the ECW show, but there’s a reason promoters virtually never do this. Then again, there are reasons where things most promoters wouldn’t allow that the hardcore promotions embrace that are only aiming for the niche of the niche do and there is a place for them if it’s a viable financial business.”

Meltzer was highly critical of the stunt on social media, leading to GCW marketing a t-shirt featuring his negative reaction.