Chris Jericho's role in two popular wrestlers signing with AEW instead of WWE

Santana and Ortiz are a part of Chris Jericho's faction, The Inner Circle, in AEW. The duo were recently guests on the AEW Unrestricted podcast. During the interview, Ortiz opened up about how the duo had offers from both AEW and WWE when their contracts with IMPACT Wrestling expired.

Speaking about why they chose AEW over WWE, Ortiz revealed that it was the opportunity to work closely with Chris Jericho and to be a part of his faction that convinced them to go with AEW:

[Chris Jericho and the Inner Circle] was one of the deciding factors for us actually 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. Many other factors 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, man. He’s a huge, not to get so long winded about it, part of our bonding experience. H/T: WrestlingINC

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Ortiz on Chris Jericho's influence on his and Santana's careers

#fanart https://t.co/Gr5mpDxlKP

— Proud~N~Powerful Ortiz (@Ortiz_Powerful) August 21, 2021

Ortiz went on to talk about Chris Jericho's influence on his and Santana's careers. The AEW star said that both he and his tag team partner had read Jericho's Lion's Tale book early on in their careers. The path Jericho had taken in pro wrestling had really influenced them. They also named Dean Malenko and Eddie Guerrero as inspirations:

When we started to become a tag team, we both read Jericho’s first book, Lion’s Tale. 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] and we wanted to be a true journeyman, and we bonded over his first book. H/T: WrestlingINC

Chris Jericho recently faced MJF in the 'Fifth Labor of Jericho' where the former AEW World Champion tapped out.