Why Santana And Ortiz Chose AEW Over WWE

With Mike Santana gone from AEW, one of the original duos of the company's tag team division is over for good. Santana and Ortiz debuted at All Out 2019 after their contracts with Impact Wrestling expired. During an interview with Chris Van Vliet on his "Insight" podcast, Santana admitted that there were talks with both AEW and WWE, but a few things made the former members of LAX swing toward the former promotion. 

"We had spoken to WWE extensively, and they made it very hard for us to turn them down," Santana said. "Cody [Rhodes] was the one who hired us, and we had already, before anything, we had spoke a while back, and we had given Cody our word before anything, and our word is everything. [WWE] asked have we signed anything, and we're like, 'No, but we gave our word, and we would like to stick to that.' At the time we both had young children, we wanted to see them grow up, and the schedule was much easier with AEW."

Santana also revealed some of the perks that WWE had offered him and Ortiz, including not being on "NXT" for very long, as well as the ability to stay in New York instead of moving to Orlando. However, he and Ortiz knew that if they wrestled on WWE's main roster, they would never spend any time with their children, and this was ultimately the difference maker. Unfortunately, the team failed to accomplish gold in AEW, and Santana and Ortiz had a fallout behind the scenes. Ortiz is currently out of action with a torn pec injury.

Please credit "Insight" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.