Yahoo Movies Exclusive: AEW's Ortiz nearly lost a finger during Stadium Stampede entrance
At AEW Double Or Nothing 2021 the Inner Circle made an incredible entrance, propelling down the scoreboard at TIAA Bank Field, the home of the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Stadium Stampede entrance is something AEW fans will never forget and Inner Circle members Santana and Ortiz will remember it forever as well, but for different reasons.
Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy ahead of their match at AEW Dynamite Beach Break where they'll with Chris Jericho against 2point0 and Daniel Garcia, Santana and Ortiz chose the Stadium Stampede entrance as their favourite Inner Circle moment.
"That was probably one of the craziest things I've ever done in wrestling," Santana said.
"Whenever we go to Jacksonville and we pull up to the stadium at Daily's Place I always take a moment to look up at that screen and just go, 'Yeah, we really did that, like idiots.'"
Santana also had the unfortunate honour of being the first Inner Circle member to be taken up to the scoreboard and wait for the big moment.
"They took each of us one by one to stand up there and hook us in. It had to be the two biggest people at each end. So I remember the guy that was rigging us he goes, 'Alright, so who's going to be first to go up?' [Jake] Hagar looks at me, he's like, 'Brother, that's you, that's all you.'
"So I had no choice but to be the first one to go up. I remember going up there and I was standing up there by myself and then the rigger went back down and left me there by myself and my whole life was just flashing because I was like, 'I'm really up here about to propel down maybe like 100 feet or more. This is my life right now, holy shit.'"
Ortiz added: "There's no way I would ever forget that. I could be going senile at 90 and I think that memory will still be there. It was such a wild experience."
For Ortiz, the experience was extra scary as he nearly lost a finger during the stunt.
"I wasn't wearing gloves," Ortiz explained. "So when I jumped, out of instinct I grabbed the rope in front of me. But you have this carabiner hooked up and it's like this thick metal carabiner, so with the slack of me getting pulled up, it cut my finger.
"So I actually wrestled the rest of Stadium Stampede with a bandage around my finger and it cut pretty deep – it left a scar.
"But I was like, 'Man if I would have grabbed it differently my finger would have just went flying off but I would have had no choice but to do the entrance because it was one take, that's it. But yeah, luckily I didn't lose my finger."
Catch AEW Dynamite live every Thursday at 1am in the UK and Rampage every Saturday at 3am on FITE with an AEW Plus subscription. US customers can also watch both shows on TNT, and in the UK, Dynamite repeats air on ITV4.
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