Mike Santana Says Cody Rhodes Convinced Him To Sign With AEW
Mike Santana recalls how Cody Rhodes convinced him to sign with AEW.
Mike Santana recalls how Cody Rhodes convinced him to sign with All Elite Wrestling.
In 2019, Ortiz and Santana found themselves signed by All Elite Wrestling from free agency and despite interest from WWE. Now, Santana has revealed what convinced him to sign with AEW at the time.
While speaking on the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Santana recalled how Cody Rhodes convinced him that AEW was the place for Ortiz and he to sign.
“So we did the first Jericho cruise. That was the first time that we met The Bucks and Cody and the whole Elite and stuff. So we got to work with the Bucks and had a great match, which probably will never see the light of day, but that was our first initial interaction with them and meeting them and getting to chat or whatever. The AEW thing wasn’t a thing yet. So we just continued doing our thing in TNA. And then Cody and I always stayed in touch. We exchanged numbers. We all stayed in touch or whatever. I remember we started hearing the rumblings of the AEW, and they could be starting a new promotion, and all this stuff. So it was a very interesting time. Then I remember being in the movie theater, I forgot what movie I was watching, I was with my daughter, and I got a text from Cody. You know you’re in the movie theater, and then a text comes in, you look down, and your eyesight is trying to adjust. So I look and I see Cody [has messaged me], I’m like, Oh, damn, what’s going on? Such a Cody text, by the way, I open my phone, and it goes, ‘It’s real. It’s happening. When is your contract up?’ So then we chatted a little bit and I gave him my word, and that was that. That to me, is everything. So that was a big component. Even when we were having the talks with WWE, I remember we were sitting in a parking lot in Puerto Rico, where we finally decided and we were going to tell WWE, hey, we’re gonna go do this other thing. The main thing that we said is, listen, we gave them our word.”
Elsewhere in the same interview, Santana spoke about his loss at TNA Slammiversary. You can read more about that here.
