Mike Santana discusses his split from Ortiz.
The duo was previously one of the top tag teams in the wrestling world, and they won the IMPACT World Tag Team Championship four times. They signed with AEW in 2019, and they were featured in the company until Santana went down with an ACL injury in June 2022.
Santana returned in August 2023. He later cut a promo and said he was going his own way. Ortiz then confronted Santana after his match on AEW Rampage: Grand Slam.
In an interview with Jeremy Lambert and Joel Pearl on In The Weeds, Mike Santana discussed the split. (H/t Jeremy Lambert of Fightful for the transcription)
“In life, there come moments where you look back at everything and are like, ‘This was cool and great accomplishments that we did, but sometimes you want more.’ Sometimes, you don’t want to be comfortable,” Mike Santana said. “I’m the type of person where comfortability makes me uncomfortable, and I like that. Wrestling, just like with any job, you want to progress and you want to get better and move up and be a bigger name and do this and that. For me, personally, I realized that it’s about that time. For me.
“I’m happy with everything that we’ve done and with the run that we had. It was great. We got to accomplish a lot of things together. We came up together, we helped each other get through a lot of things. Sometimes, things happen for a reason. There is a lot of personal stuff, but that’s between him and me and for him and me to deal with. We decided to be professionals and we have a job. We decided to do that job. Did I initially want to do it? No, I didn’t feel like there was a need for me, personally, but we’re pros and we have a job, so let’s do our job and make the best of it and move forward.”
Mike Santana Reflects On Missing Time With Injury
During the interview, Mike Santana was also asked whether missing so much time with an injury helped him gain more clarity regarding his feelings on the situation. He recalled how he was not in a good place mentally, and the road to get to where he is today has been difficult.
“Yeah, but I was feeling like that way before the injury,” Mike Santana said. “I was just not in a good place mentally with anything. When you have nothing but time to think and sit with yourself, you have to put a lot of shit in perspective and have to make a lot of decisions. For me, personally, everything happened the way it needed to.
“I look at this injury and everything, from my dad passing away, from the struggles at work, everything happened the way it needed to happen to get me to where I am today. Today, I am the best version of myself that I’ve ever been. It is what it is. Sometimes you have to go through the shit to get to the light. The injury itself, it did a lot to me. It was definitely one of the things that it opened my eyes to.”
Mike Santana: I Want To Grow And Have Fun
Now that he’s back, Mike Santana made it clear that he wants to make the most of the time that he has left in the business. He stated that he wants to grow and have fun.
“We all have a window in this business,” Mike Santana said. “I’m 32 years old. I’m not old, but I ain’t exactly that young either. I want to make the absolute most of my time and truly make the best of it. I want to be able to look back and be like, ‘I did that’ and be content and happy with what I’ve done.
“At the end of the day, my main thing now is growing and having fun doing it. I always said, just like with any job and profession, if you ain’t working to move up or get promoted or be bigger than what you are, what the hell is the point, what are you doing? Not everybody has that same mindset, and that’s okay. I’m just speaking of myself.”
The full interview can be seen below:
