During a recent interview with Stephanie Chase, AEW stars Santana and Ortiz commented on working in the LAX faction in Impact Wrestling, their brutal Parking Lot Fight with the Best Friends in AEW, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Ortiz on joining LAX in Impact and how it changed the team’s wrestling style: “It allowed us to change our style a bit too because coming off the indies, we did a very spot-heavy style – like very high-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, 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 on the Parking Lot Fight with Best Friends in AEW: “Fast forward to us doing the parking lot match with Best Friends, we were already ready. 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, not critically acclaimed — I don’t know if the word I’m using is right. I don’t want to toot our own horn, 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, 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 a long-winded way to go back to your original question, it’s just 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 we’re going to tell more of a story, we’re going to be more aggressive and stuff like that. It really shaped us to kind of what you see in the ring today and what we do.”
Santana: “Like Ortiz said, we set out to carve our own path with it. I think what people gravitated to was the fact that, ‘Okay, they’re LAX, but this isn’t Homicide and Hernandez. They’re a totally different thing than them.’ I think that’s what people respected about it too.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)