Ortiz Recalls Winning TNA Tag Team Titles While Not Under Contract

In an interview with the Johnny I Pro Show (via Fightful), Ortiz spoke about his time with Santana as LAX, with TNA putting the tag team titles on them when they weren’t signed yet.

He said: “Scott D’Amore was actually the agent for the match. He’s breaking down what we’re gonna do, whatever, blah, blah, blah, and then he goes, ‘Yeah, and then, LAX up for the win,’ and then we’re just like, ‘Wait, what?’ It was for the belts. Off the bat, second day. That was our second match and then we were just like — we kind of looked at each other and we’re marking out. But, we’re playing it cool. ‘Cool, cool, cool, cool,’ and then after the meeting broke, we walk off to the side and we were like, ‘What did he just say? Yo, what!? We’re gonna win what?’ We didn’t even sign a contract at that point. They made us champions. We signed our contract later that week. The fact that they put the titles on us with no contract, with nothing pen to paper and they trusted in us and of course, we’re like, ‘Yeah, well, let’s go…’”

He also commented on Bound for Glory 2018, where LAX faced The OGz (Homicide & Hernandez) in a Concrete Jungle Deathmatch.

He added: “Another wild one was — I would definitely probably put that up there. I think it was Slammiversary. We wrestled The OGz… The 5150 Street Fight was really cool. I like that one a little bit better but the Concrete Jungle Deathmatch was exposed boards. That was just a scary match to wrestle in… So what happened that day is we come out and we came out with Bodega Bamz. At that time, he’s a New York City rapper. He did our theme song, and he came out and performed it. It was cool. Being New Yorkers, being in the Hip Hop scene, I was like, ‘Yo, this is dope.’ So, he had his crew with him though, so there was like 20 dudes in the ring and we get in the ring, we’re jumping around. So they had tightened the ring and the boards just with no give, no room, right? So with everybody jumping in the ring, one of the boards popped out and they could not get it back into place because everything was so tight and we’re about to wrestle. So then, the ref had to pull the one board out and then it just became like wrestling on Jenga blocks. It was the scariest — you know when you get on ice and you’re like, ‘Oh, woah?’ That’s exactly how I felt the whole entire match. The moves itself, like taking the moves on the exposed boards, that sucked. But, nothing sucked more than the fear of my ankles, like, I’m gonna slip.“