Santana and Ortiz stand tall among the most popular tag teams in the world of professional wrestling today. The Proud ‘n’ Powerful are members of Chris Jericho’s stable but they don’t seem to be getting along with the Inner Circle leader of late.
The two recently sat down with Stephanie Chase of Digital Spy for an interview. Santana revealed what he thinks about Chris Jericho’s comments wherein he stated he wanted the group to respectfully disband after Double or Nothing 2021.
He said he agrees with Jericho’s point that each individual member of the group can succeed on their own now that they have received tremendous success as a stable. He compared this dynamic to Wu-Tang Clan.
“For me personally, I just felt like we had done so much, and we have proven to be very successful at being the group and stuff. I just felt like it was time for all of us to, like you said, go our separate ways and start establishing ourselves in whatever we’re gonna continue doing and stuff like that. And then maybe eventually later down the line, we could bring it back together for a major moment and rock and roll again.
“But I always feel like the group is cool and we’ve proven that the group can be successful. But now let’s prove that each of us can be successful on our own. Almost like the Wu Tang Clan, they were such a great band together, they were so successful together and then when they all broke up and went their own separate ways, they all became successful. So I think that was more my mentality towards it.”
Ortiz, on the other hand, compared The Inner Circle to teams like The Avengers and The Justice League; saying each character has their separate adventures and “standalone movies.” He did admit that there is some sort of hostility within The Inner Circle.
“…We’re like the Justice League or The Avengers, they have standalone movies, you know what I mean, and their own side adventures,” said Ortiz. “And you’re just like., ‘Why isn’t the rest of the Justice League to help them in this world cataclysmic event? Like why isn’t Thor helping out?’
“And it’s kind of like yeah, at the moment, we’re having our standalone movies pretty much. And I like having the option to always come back to it, like why does everyone have to break up? Why does everything have to end in negativity or turmoil? Even though that’s kind of where it seems like it’s going right now, and only time will tell. You know what I mean, but you know, family fights. And we have our issues but you know, we’ll see where it plays out.”
The turmoil within the group was first brought up when fellow AEW star Eddie Kingston called out Chris Jericho for allegedly holding back his stable mates and not showing up at the right time to save Santana and Ortiz from 2pointo and Daniel Garcia.
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