Santana & Ortiz: “WWE Made It Really Hard For Us To Turn Them Down”

AEW on-air correspondent Chris Van Vliet recently released an interview with AEW tag team Santana & Ortiz. During the interview the team had some interesting comments regarding their signing with the company, and how they ‘nearly signed’ with WWE.

Earlier this year the team left IMPACT wrestling and questions were being asked by fans as to where the team would end up next. Rumors at the time indicated that Santana & Ortiz would end up in either NXT, AEW or Ring of Honor.

“I feel like the stars aligned perfectly, with our contracts coming, how All Out was lining up” Ortiz started. “The Jericho Cruise was basically our job interview. We got on with The Bucks and we got to wrestle Hangman and Cody in a match that will never see the light of day!”

“So when we came here we had a long conversation, a long sit down of course” Ortiz continued. “Our careers go hand in hand with each other. We were in Puerto Rico riding together and we were about to turn down WWE. So we sat down and we didn’t want to burn a bridge. We never want to burn a bridge, that’s not how we do business. And we get cut off, they say ‘really think about the decision.’ They made it really hard for us to turn them down.”

Santana then stated that “they were pretty much ‘write your own ticket'” with regards to the NXT deal that they were offered. “So it was NXT to eventually go up to the main roster” Ortiz then added. “So, we were just like, dang, honestly the ultimate decision was ‘do we want to be a part of something established?’ or ‘do we want to be a part of something new and make history?’ Because, no matter what happens with AEW we will always be part of the first main event of the first ever episode of AEW. Best case scenario [in WWE] we would be small fish in an ocean. There’s so many people there, it would be an uphill battle. Not saying we couldn’t do it, but now we’re a part of change. No matter what happens with this company [AEW] wrestling has changed for the better.”

Ortiz finished by saying “we didn’t want to get into a bidding war, but it eventually went down to ‘what do toy want?”