Santana And Ortiz Talk Jerry Lynn's Influence On Their Parking Lot Brawl With The Best Friends

Last week on AEW Dynamite, Santana and Ortiz took on Best Friends in a parking lot brawl match. Chuck Taylor and Trent ended up victorious after Ortiz and Santana had defeated them just two weeks earlier.

Those two tag teams have been feuding in tag matches, six-person matches and even 10-person matches over the last few months. Santana and Ortiz discussed what their main goal was with the parking lot brawl match against the Best Friends when they joined Bused Open Podcast w/Bully Ray.

"I think the main goal was to tell a great story and the culmination of everything that we built within the month of August, leading into this time and this point," said Santana. "I think that the match came out the way it did because it almost needed to. The heat that we were bringing, the fight that they were bringing and it also showed a side that very few people get to see out of Best Friends.

"These guys are always are very 'haha' and very jokey and we were able to bring out a different side to them. I think us as heels and as performers, we did our job with doing that and just the whole story that we told within the actual match and their fight and their fire and us gaining our control and them bringing it back and showing us that they had that fire again. So, I mean, it was just Pro Wrestling 101 that we tried to do and not just that, but also help elevate the brand and the company and the show in itself."

"Honestly we went in with a chip in our shoulder and we wanted to show people, we wanted to show the world that we belong to the main event slot," said Ortiz. "It was a lot of people where I have seen and I read a few people saying, 'I didn't expect it to be this good' and that's exactly what we wanted. We just wanted to prove that we belong in the main event. That we can main event in any show, any pay-per-view and give us the opportunity. We might sacrifice our body a little bit along the way, but we're going to prove that we belong there."

The Parking Lot Brawl was filmed cinematically which has become a popular thing for many promotions since the pandemic began. The tag team discussed the production quality of the match and how it changed their mentality going into it, if any.

"Yeah, that's a testament to the production team. They did an amazing job shooting that match," stated Ortiz. "As Tony [Khan] stated on Twitter, we did it on one take. It was one shot, filmed like a regular match, and man, the production team were on top of everything. They called all the angles. Honestly, we got to watch it back after we did the match and there wasn't much editing at all if any and it was amazing. Shout out to the production team. They did amazing."

"And also, Ortiz and I, we had this quick little chat amongst ourselves as we were going out there, 'Yo, we're coming to fight. I don't know who else is coming to do whatever, but in my mind and my head, I'm coming with all the fire and fury that I've had pent up this entire year and we're coming to fight.' A phrase that I used before the cameras went on was, 'Clench your jaw boys because there's going to be some potatoes thrown' and again, thankfully, we all walked out of it safely. We all took care of each other, and here we are to talk about it," said Santana.

A man with many tag team matches under his belt, Jerry Lynn, was the agent and producer of the match and Ortiz discussed Lynn's influence on it.

"Thanks to Jerry Lynn, the agent the match, and Jerry Lynn has all the experience in the world when it comes to these types of matches. He definitely gave us the guidance because we came with a bunch of crazy ideas, as you can imagine. We were like, 'Oh, let do this, this, this, and this' and Jerry harped on. He doesn't want the match to be built furniture, where the guys are trying to build all these crazy extravagant things to get put in through or whatever the case is. So, Jerry kept harping on that," revealed Ortiz.

"He wants the match to flow and I think we accomplished that in the match and we were pretty much all on the same page. We all wanted to, for a lack of a better term, murder each other, and we were down. We were down for whatever and Santana also had that talk where it was just like, 'Hey guys, listen. We're going out there. This is a fight for us. At the end of the day, we'll be fine, but let's go out there with that mentality because if we don't have that mindset like this is a real fight, it's not going to come across on the screen.' So, that's where all of us sat down, talked, and we were in agreement. If anything, we got talked down to doing certain things."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Busted Open with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.

Mehdy Labriny contributed to this article.