Santana & Ortiz On Chris Jericho’s Role In Them Choosing AEW Over WWE, Cash Wheeler’s Injury At Fight For the Fallen

In a recent interview on AEW Unrestricted, Santana and Ortiz discussed Cash Wheeler’s injury at Fight for the Fallen, Chris Jericho’s role in them choosing AEW over WWE, and much more. You can read their comments below.

Santana and Ortiz on Cash Wheeler’s injury during their Fight for the Fallen match: “I [Santana] had no idea what was going on. I just heard someone yelling ‘fuck’ a million times….it was a gnarly situation because I [Ortiz] was on the top rope with Dax. I looked over and all I saw was that it looked like a water fountain. Blood just came shooting out of Cash’s arm. He just grabbed it and ran straight to the doctor. We were freaking out a little bit, but we were kind of like, ‘What are we going to do?’ We got to it and we did the best we could with the situation. At that point, we just wanted to end the match. Obviously, we didn’t know how badly injured he was…..we’re always taught, for me [Santana] from day one of pro wrestling, that you protect your opponent and you protect yourself. It was one of those things where I look back at it and I was like, ‘Damn, what could I have done to avoid that situation? What could I have done to help?’ It was one of those situations that was a freak accident. Thankfully, he was good, and you just keep it going.”

Ortiz on Chris Jericho’s role in them joining AEW over WWE: “That was one of the deciding factors for us coming into the company because right before we went in, we had offers to go to WWE or AEW. We were on the fence initially, but one of the swaying decisions for us was Chris specifically wanted us to be a part of The Inner Circle. We were like, wow. He’s a huge part of our bonding experience. When we started becoming a tag team, we both read Jericho’s first book, ‘A Lion’s Tale’, so we were like this is the blueprint to be a wrestler. This is it right here. He was a journeyman. He wrestled everywhere. This is what we want to do. Watching guys like him, Dean [Malenko], Eddie [Guerrero], we wanted to be true journeymen. We bonded over his first book, so fast forward to us hearing Cody [Rhodes] saying Chris wants us to be in this stable, we were like, ‘What? What’s going on right now?’

Santana: “It was just one of those really weird, full circle moments where we were like, we bonded over his first book, and now we are a part of his journey, and a part of his legacy. We will be tied into his career. It’s crazy when you look at it that we grew up watching him and all of these guys. This whole experience the past two years has been insane. With everything that’s gone on personally in my life, with everything professionally, the whole pandemic, it’s just been crazy insane.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit AEW Unrestricted with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.