Mike Santana no longer part of AEW

[Chris]

I think Swerve said HHH came around after Hit Row got formed HBK kept telling him Swerve was good. He clearly wanted the whole act back in 2021, Swerve's point was he couldn't even get the act started in NXT until HHH stepped away

 

[Smart Marx]

Makes sense. I’ll be honest sometimes being part of a larger act is what draws me to a superstar and see their potential.

 

[Comrade Khan]

i dunno how true it is but I am seeing it parroted a lot on reddit. Apparently Santana turned down a tag champ run, according to Ortiz? that changes things a lot. maybe someone can find it

 

[Smart Marx]

And to be fair, even AEW technically has put swerve first in Mogul, and then in the embassy. He gonna be the breakout star of that group though for sure.

 

[Chris]

i dunno how true it is but I am seeing it parroted a lot on reddit. Apparently Santana turned down a tag champ run, according to Ortiz? that changes things a lot. maybe someone can find it

No that is an aggregation error (as usual).

Ortiz was the one who said they were meant to win them at times and it's the same interview where he mentions Santana was adamant about not teaming. But he never says anything of the sort that those situations were related, they're two separate points he's making.

 

[Smart Marx]

i dunno how true it is but I am seeing it parroted a lot on reddit. Apparently Santana turned down a tag champ run, according to Ortiz? that changes things a lot. maybe someone can find it

That would be the opposite of everything I’ve ever heard. The thing Chris was saying, Ortiz said was they were penciled to win the titles twice according to him.

 

[Comrade Khan]

No that is an aggregation error (as usual).

Ortiz was the one who said they were meant to win them at times and it's the same interview where he mentions Santana was adamant about not teaming. But he never says anything of the sort that those situations were related, they're two separate points he's making.

this makes a lot more sense as I feel that would have been a huge story had he actually said what people are saying lol

 

[Chris]

this makes a lot more sense as I feel that would have been a huge story had he actually said what people are saying lol

Ortiz says Santana was adamant about them not teaming, recalls two occasions they were supposed to win AEW Tag Titles

Ortiz opens up and speaks candidly about him and Santana no longer being a team.

www.postwrestling.com

I tend to avoid it at times but that stuff (opinions from fans that Ortiz & Santana should’ve gotten AEW Tag Title run), it’s almost hard to avoid because we’re constantly tagged in stuff about that. To answer your question, how I felt about it, ah, I think we could have forced a hand a little bit more when we did have the opportunities that we had and I can’t completely blame the company because I mean, there was talks about it but it was almost like it was never the right time, right? It just wasn’t our time and it was just kind of because we were always intertwined with a huge storyline with The Inner Circle and it would have been hard to sway off and kind of go do our own tag thing and go after the Tag Titles. So, it actually was supposed to happen more than once. But just due to stuff out of our control, out of my control, it just never seemed to pan out. It’s not like those people on the internet that were clamoring for us to be Tag Team Champions — it was noticed by the people in AEW and above and it almost happened two times. It just never panned out. I won’t get into the weeds of things, only because I think I’ll get in trouble if I do (he laughed). That’s pretty much it. It was supposed to happen. It just never did unfortunately.

 

[Chris]

I've seen that Santana story parroted a lot too so I'm sure it'll have to be debunked anytime he's brought up by someone

 

[Smart Marx]

I respect his response. He’s trying to navigate answering completely honestly while also not disparaging the company that he works for and I think he means everything that he says. The only thing I would disagree with is I think when he was in the inner circle would’ve been the perfect time to do it. They were in the hottest faction in the company they could’ve easily did a thing where you know Jericho was the world champion and they were the tagteam champions, etc.

 

[Smart Marx]

Someone is going to snap up Santana quick though.

 

[Comrade Khan]

I've seen that Santana story parroted a lot too so I'm sure it'll have to be debunked anytime he's brought up by someone

It's crazy how much it's got up voted to the point I doubted my memory of said interview

 

[Smart Marx]

It's crazy how much it's got up voted to the point I doubted my memory of said interview

Sometimes people hear what they want to hear.

 

[BSE]

Seems a bit confusing then if Hunter called him to come back but it’s also possible he got proven wrong. That’s the story WWE always told McIntyre is sometimes they want you to go out and you’ll prove themselves and then they come back.

One big difference is there wasn’t an AEW back then

 

[Smart Marx]

It’s probably easier for some people to try to create a villain so to speak of Santana as the one who sabotaged everything versus it just being a complicated situation with a lot of different people that want different things.