Memories from their time in IMPACT.
Mike Santana and Ortiz tagged together for over a decade. They were known as EYFBO, LAX, and Proud-N-Powerful throughout the different stretches of their tag run.
Ortiz looked back on some of the highlights from their time together in IMPACT/TNA Wrestling. He told Johnny I Pro Show about when he and Santana were informed they were winning the IMPACT World Tag Team Titles for the first time.
He said when they won the titles, they were not under contract. The duo put pen to paper later that week.
“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…’”
One of the other highlights Ortiz discussed was Bound For Glory 2018, where he and Santana clashed with The OGz (Homicide & Hernandez) in a Concrete Jungle Deathmatch.
“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.”
Santana and Ortiz have gone their separate ways. Ortiz spoke highly of Santana's success in TNA and WWE, and to read his comments, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Johnny I Pro Show with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
