Ortiz & Santana Explain How Being In LAX Changed Their In-Ring Style

In an interview with Stephanie Chase, AEW's Proud N' Powerful, Santana and Ortiz, talked about their time in Impact Wrestling as members of the LAX stable. Ortiz pointed to their time in Impact as an example of the team becoming well-rounded, going from spot-heavy wrestlers to performers who can brawl.

"It allowed us to change our style a bit too," Ortiz said. "Because coming off the indies, we did a very spot-heavy style. Like very octane, which we still did, but we worked more on the aggressive side. I think, especially our time at Impact, we kind of got it typecast doing that brawler, like a big gimmick match. Almost every feud ended in a huge gimmick match for us in Impact. And that was a blessing and a curse.

"It was a curse on our bodies because we would have to do these really hard-fought matches like Barbed-Wire Massacre III. That match was scary just to even consider because I'm not a death match guy. So I was just like, 'oh, we're going to do barbed wire?'  But I'm glad I did it. I would do it again at this point because I kind of got that initial fear out the way. But it definitely, the time as LAX in Impact, it definitely changed up our style a lot."

Ortiz believes that experience in brawling style matches is what prepared them for bouts like their Parking Lot brawl with the Best Friends on AEW Dynamite.

"Fast forward to us doing the parking lot match with Best Friends, we were already ready," Ortiz said. "We already had the experience doing types of matches like that. And I think that was a small part of the success of the match and how, you know, critically acclaimed — I don't know if the world I'm using is right. I don't want to toot our own horn, thank you. But for the most part, everyone received the match with positive feedback and I think it's a testament to Best Friends and Jerry Lynn also helping us put it together and just having that experience. He has experiences, a plethora of experiences with stuff like that.

"But also, just we were mentally already in the zone. We knew what it took mentally to get into that zone to have a type of match like that. And that's a testament to our time in LAX. It's long-winded, to go back to your original question, we never set out to be like the original LAX, we wanted to be ourselves. We knew being under the LAX moniker, we had to step it up and be more aggressive versus right before that we focused more so on the athletic side of the wrestling, whereas when we transitioned to LAX it's like 'okay we're going to tell more of a story, we're going to be more aggressive and stuff like that.'"

You can watch the full interview below.

Please provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription