Major Players
The Major Players are a professional wrestling tag team and Wrestling stable, consisting of Brian Myers and Matt Cardona. They currently appear in Impact Wrestling, in which Myers and Cardona are both former Impact Digital Media Champion. Myers and Cardona are best known for their time in WWE as Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder, where they are former two-time WWE Raw Tag Team Champions. The duo made their professional wrestling debut in 2004 as a tag team in New York Wrestling Connection, wrestling as Brian Myers and Brett Matthews. After the team signed with WWE, they would become almost exclusively tag team wrestlers. They debuted in WWE's main roster in 2007 on the ECW brand as Brian and Brett Major, collectively known as The Major Brothers. Later that year, they were repackaged and renamed to Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder as associates of Edge and subsequently aligned themselves with La Familia on the SmackDown brand. Nicknamed "The Rated-R Entourage" and "The Edgeheads", Hawkins and Ryder continued their alliance with Edge until the team split in April 2009, after Ryder was drafted back to the ECW brand as part of the 2009 WWE draft. After the team's split, Hawkins and Ryder sporadically teamed together in matches, but would not officially reunite until almost 10 years later in January 2019. They would go on to capture the WWE Raw Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania 35 in April 2019. History New York Wrestling Connection (2004–2006) The two debuted as a team in New York Wrestling Connection (NYWC) in 2004 with Matthew Cardona using the name Brett Matthews and Brian Myers using his real name. On May 21, 2005, they defeated the NYWC Tag Team Champions Dickie Rodz and Mason Raige by disqualification. At the next event on June 4, they won a rematch decisively to become Tag Team Champions. Later that month they were attacked by The Dead Presidents (Lo Lincoln and Boog Washington). Though they initially defended their titles against them in July, on August 27. On September 23 they were entered into a three-way match with the champions but Team Tremendous (Dan Barry and Ken Scampi) ended up with the belts. After continuing to win matches they re-earned a match against the champions and won the titles for the second time on January 25, 2006. They held the titles until they faced The B.S. Xpress (Tony Burma & Mike Spinelli), who defeated them for the gold on March 26. World Wrestling Entertainment/WWE Developmental territories (2006–2007) Matthews and Myers moved to Deep South Wrestling (DSW) in Georgia tweaking their ring names to Brett and Brian Majors, appearing collectively as The Majors Brothers. They lost their debut match on June 1 to Montel Vontavious Porter and Eric Pérez. They picked up their first wins on June 15 against Francisco Ciatso and Cru Jones but lost a Four Way title contendership match in July to Urban Assault (Peréz and Sonny Siaki). They continued to feud with Ciatso who changed partners frequently but never defeated