‘Matusow’ Seeks to Get to the Heart of a Complicated Character

If you’ve been around poker or consumed poker content at any point over the last 25 years, it’s hard not to have formed some kind of opinion about Mike Matusow. Anyone who tuned in at the apex of the original poker boom got to know why Matusow’s nickname, “The Mouth,” was a well-earned moniker courtesy of his over-the-top antics and theatrics at the table.

At a time when poker flooded the mainstream airwaves, Matusow’s face and voice were everywhere – World Series of Poker broadcasts on ESPN, High Stakes Poker and five separate World Poker Tour final tables, for starters. Matusow won four WSOP bracelets, the 2013 NBC Heads-Up Championship, the 2005 WSOP Tournament of Champions (with a $1 million first-place prize) and perhaps most notably stole the spotlight during his run to the final table of the 2005 WSOP Main Event.

Like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey and so many of the breakout stars of that era, Matusow was enjoying success at a level that had him on a trajectory for a no-doubt, slam-dunk induction into the Poker Hall of Fame. In 2025, with Negreanu, Hellmuth and Ivey long since enshrined with that Hall of Fame honor, Matusow stands on the outside looking in.

Some of the key reasons why that’s remained the status quo lay at the heart of what’s explored in ‘Matusow,’ the documentary film by Frank Zarrillo currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Over the course of two hours, ‘Matusow’ digs into all of the highs and lows Mike Matusow has experienced over the last three decades – his biggest poker wins interspersed with his struggles with drugs, his time in prison, his back injury and his bipolar disorder, all mixed into one extraordinarily complicated and candid picture of who Matusow is and who he strives to be.

“I think, not just in the poker industry but in general, Mike’s the most unique character I’ve ever met,” said Zarrillo. “And I don’t think anybody on this planet will ever give me that level of access again. When I first met him I got off the plane, I Ubered to his house and he greeted me by wearing just his boxers. And that’s how it was.”

The poker world is used to seeing a completely unfiltered stream of thoughts and opinions from Matusow, both at the tables and on social media. But the depth of his openness about all of the events and relationships in his life in this documentary is striking.

The timeline of the documentary is centered around the 2021 WSOP and Matusow’s pursuit of a fifth career WSOP gold bracelet – a landmark he feels is crucial for bolstering his credentials for his Poker Hall of Fame bid. Zarrillo spent two months during that series, the last one ever held at Rio Las Vegas, following Matusow around as he zipped through the halls on his scooter chasing the kind of success he’d enjoyed many times over in that convention center.

That ongoing chase for bracelet No. 5 is interspersed with Matusow addressing many of the speed bumps that he has faced over the last 20 years, as his poker career strayed from the heights it might otherwise have reached because of events beyond the table. Matusow opened up his home and life in almost every sense, digging into complex relationships and family dynamics, as well as the struggles of balancing various prescriptions for a variety of mental health and physical issues while staying sharp at the table.

In between the tournament poker sessions, the laying bare of the details of his life and Matusow showing off his beloved cats, the audience is reminded of the many highlights of Matusow’s poker past, as well as some stories that poker fans and the general public might not know so much about. The archive of tournament footage runs deep, as does Matusow’s personally documented library including physical therapy, doctor’s visits and more.

For Zarrillo, it was a challenge to balance the overwhelming depth of footage at his fingertips with the present day candor that Matusow was offering.

“When you’re making a documentary, you tend to rely heavily on old footage from back in the day,” said Zarrillo. “My notion was to get as much original footage as we can, because anybody can go back in time and watch anything from the poker world, just from the past. But my idea was to create new and original content in this documentary.”

The Matusow documentary makes a point of featuring Matusow’s contemporaries in the present day, most notably Hellmuth, Negreanu and Scotty Nguyen. Hellmuth’s is the most consistent presence, as he and Matusow discuss poker on the phone and on the floor of the WSOP. Matusow even takes a moment to drop his increasingly intense public-facing persona to share in one of Hellmuth’s over-the-top costumed entrances at one point in the documentary.

It’s a brief break from the seriousness and the weight that carries on through much of the documentary. Matusow is well aware of the reputation he’s built, and the polarization that he continues to foster through his politically charged social media presence. Through all of the personal and professional struggles that Matusow fights his way through under the camera’s watchful eye, it’s clear how much Matusow lives and dies with every bet and every card in every tournament.

From Zarrillo’s perspective, there were three or four other documentaries’ worth of footage that ultimately had to hit the cutting room floor along the way. His hope is that when the audience reaches the end of ‘Matusow,’ they leave with the feeling that they know most of what there is to know about Mike – the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between.

“You’ve got to put 25-plus years of history into two hours,” said Zarrillo. “It was challenging. The whole point of it was trying to make it as human as possible to somebody. I didn’t want to just make this for the poker world. The whole idea is to see the human side of him that no one’s ever gonna get to see unless you’re in his orbit.”