Mike Santana Spills on His AEW Comeback and Real-Life Drama with Ortiz

After a year-long hiatus due to an injury sustained in last year's Blood & Guts match, AEW wrestler Mike Santana made his comeback to the promotion in August. Before his injury, rumors circulated about underlying tension between Santana and his tag team partner, Ortiz. Both wrestlers have now confirmed these rumors since Santana's return to AEW.

Interestingly, the two have recently initiated a storyline against each other on AEW's Rampage, a plot born out of their real-life discord. In a recent interview with Fightful's In The Weeds, Santana opened up about their relationship and their commitment to professionalism.

He said:

"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. 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.”

Santana also reflected on his year away from wrestling, stating that the time off provided him the opportunity to reassess his career trajectory and personal life.

When asked about the clarity his time off brought him, Santana remarked:

“Yeah, but I was feeling like that way before the injury. 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 st 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 st 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."

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