Santana & Ortiz are back and they’re heading to AEW All In.
Following reports that he’d been cleared for action, Santana made a sensational return to AEW on the August 23rd episode of Dynamite to reunite with long-time tag team partner Ortiz.
On the show, Jon Moxley defeated Rey Fenix forcing him to pass out, as the pair prepared to do battle in Stadium Stampede at All In. However, once the match was over, Wheeler Yuta and Claudio Castagnoli arrived on the scene with crowbars in hard to dish out more punishment. But the duo was quickly thwarted by Penta and Eddie Kingston, not that they got very far before being stopped by Ortiz.
The star was then joined by Santana and the pair took out Penta and Kingston. In the midst of the chaos, Fenix was taken out by the Blackpool Combat Club and the trio left with Santana and Ortiz, leaving doctors to tend to the fallen star. Fenix was eventually taken out of the arena on a stretcher.
The storyline was done as a way to write Fenix off All In, as he’s unable to travel to the UK.
As a result, the match will now see the Blackpool Combat Club team with Santana & Ortiz to take on Eddie Kingston, Orange Cassidy, Best Friends, and Penta.
When Were Santana And Ortiz Last In AEW?
The appearance by Santana was his first on AEW television since June 2022 when he took part in Blood and Guts. Meanwhile, outside of an independent booking in August, Ortiz hasn’t wrestled since appearing at a Ring of Honor taping back in April. His last AEW match came on Dynamite a month earlier, when he took part in the Face of the Revolution Ladder Match against the likes of Eddie Kingston, Sammy Guevara, Powerhouse Hobbs, and more.
To add to the significance of the return, it’s been something of an open secret that the pair fell out just prior to Santana suffering his injury and had stopped teaming together. However, it seems that at least on-screen the popular duo has buried the hatchet.