Ortiz: Santana Was Adamant About Not Working With Me, AEW Had No Choice But To Split Us Up

Ortiz opens up about his split with Mike Santana.

Ortiz opens up about his split with Mike Santana.

Former IMPACT World Tag Team Champions Ortiz and Santana joined AEW in 2019. They were one of the company’s top tag teams, but a knee injury put Santana on the shelf for over a year. The duo returned in August 2023, and though they briefly reunited for the Stadium Stampede match at AEW All In, they split up due to personal issues. Mike Santana ultimately beat Ortiz in the culmination of their feud on the October 27 episode of AEW Rampage.

Speaking on The Shining Wizards Wrestling Podcast, Ortiz was asked to discuss how he felt about his split with Santana.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t the company’s call to split us. Me and Santana just couldn’t get it together personally. He just was very adamant about not working with me anymore, for whatever reason. So the company kind of had no choice but to split us up, right? So they’re like, okay, they’re not just not tag. It doesn’t make any sense. Let’s at least make this make sense, why you split. But even when we did on TV, it just ended up I feel like being kind of rushed, like let’s get to the point already, due to stuff that was going on backstage and it was just making it hard to really put forward a program, and then just our television in general kind of has that feeling all over, on all our shows. There’s almost that sense of rushing at times. Some stuff kind of sits and settles, but you could kind of see what they’re putting their effort into, the stuff that really gets time to settle and really get to cook, whereas some other segments, due to time constraints, you just have to make those segments go faster and faster. There was supposed to be more development between me and him. Again, things out of my control. It just never panned out the way it was. It was set out to be a couple of weeks, throughout all our television, Collision, Dynamite, and Rampage, and then we just kind of went to Rampage and then we stood there. Yeah, it kind of played out how it played out, unfortunately,” Ortiz said.

Santana previously discussed his split with Ortiz. Click here to see what he had to say.

Check out Santana’s comments about his win over Ortiz here.

Mike Santana is set to face Josh Alexander at HOG Brace For IMPACT. More information is available here.

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