Santana and Ortiz, who are currently the members of Inner Circle in All Elite Wrestling (AEW) recalled almost signing a deal with WWE.
Santana and Ortiz almost landed in WWE
During Talk is Jericho podcast, both the stars opened up on the options they were considering prior leaving Impact Wrestling promotion.
They had a word with Cody Rhodes for joining AEW, while also considered to join WWE. The prominent commentator, Jeremy Borash, known for his stint in Impact Wrestling had also signed with WWE.
They said:
“Cody had contacted us, and it was just like, ‘hey, how long do you have left at IMPACT?’ Based off that, we already knew we had another option. At the time, we were trying to negotiate with IMPACT. We were like, ‘hey, we need a little bit more money,’ and they were kind of going back and forth with us, which I understand. They’re running a business, so they’re not going to just outright give us exactly what we want. Just going back and forth with that and knowing that, we had other options, and also, WWE was an option at the time because [Jeremy] Borash now works there. That was our in, so we were just like, ‘okay, what are we going to do?’ It was a couple of weeks out from leaving IMPACT and we still didn’t know.”
“We were really sitting there and trying to make the decision, and they were like, ‘alright, just stay for one more year. Just do one more year and we’ll figure something out.’ We were going over it in our heads. ‘What are we going to do? We’re going to just stay here? People are going to turn on us, and if we stay here and they kind of feel like we’re going to leave, maybe they bury us or something sh*tty happens.’ It was like, ‘hey, we’re willing to do business the right way. We’ll lose on the way out. We’ll put over whoever you want to put over.’ We just felt like it ran its course, and we love the people there.”
“We loved working there. We just felt that we needed to grow; we felt like we were a big fish in a small pond. Not that we weren’t being challenged, but we wanted a challenge to try to work our way up.”
The departure of Santana and Ortiz from Impact Wrestling came in 2019. Following that, they joined AEW. Eventually became a member of The Inner Circle, a stable which is led by the first-ever AEW Champion, Chris Jericho, along with Sammy Guevara and Jake Hager.
