Mike Santana broke his silence over his AEW exit.
The former Proud ‘n’ Powerful member was let go by the company earlier this year. It ended nearly five years with the promotion, in a run that saw him become part of Chris Jericho‘s Inner Circle faction.
Santana split with Ortiz on screen on September 9th last year. Both moved into singles action, but it did not stop Santana from being released in March 2024. Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Santana spoke about the reasons behind him leaving AEW.
“Like I was telling you, my decision to leave AEW came well before my injury. I got hurt in June of 2022 and at that point, I was just dealing with so much in my life personally and professionally at work, and I was just burnt out. My contract was coming up in September, I believe. And I had already made the decision that I’m not going to re-sign, and I just needed to take a break and deal with the things that I needed to deal with. And yeah, so then the injury happened. So, a lot of that was going on during that time.”
Mike Santana Not Winning The Tag Team Titles ‘P*ssed’ Him Off
Later in the interview, Santana was asked why he and Ortiz never won the AEW Tag Team Championships.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I will be real, I’m gonna shoot straight with you. The reason I was given was that there were too many other people fighting for that spot. And that p*ssed me off more than anything. I understand that when you get to a certain level in this business, if you don’t fight for yourself, if you don’t advocate for yourself, you’re gonna get nowhere. And that was a big part of my fight within my team. And when I heard that, it just validated everything that I was like, alright.”
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