Mike Santana Recalls First Signing With AEW in 2019, Choosing AEW Over WWE

– During a recent interview with Insight with Chris Van Vliet, former AEW wrestler Mike Santana spoke about choosing to join AEW in 2019 along with former tag team partner Ortiz. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Mike Santana on signing with AEW: “We had spoken to WWE extensively, and they made it very hard for us to turn them down. Cody [Rhodes] was the one who hired us, and we had already, before anything, we had spoke a while back, and we had given Cody our word before anything, and our word is everything.”

On their talks with WWE: [WWE] asked have we signed anything, and we’re like, ‘No, but we gave our word, and we would like to stick to that.’ At the time we both had young children, we wanted to see them grow up, and the schedule was much easier with AEW.”