AEW: Billie Starkz Confirms AEW Signing, Jimmy Jacobs on Bryan Danielson Brought Him to AEW, Mike Santana

Billie Starkz Confirmed She Signed Contract with AEW

As noted before, Billie Starkz has been rumored since this past April to have signed an official contract with AEW.

A recent episode of the Wrestling Observer Live featured Starkz as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Starkz confirming that the reports and rumors of her being signed to a contract with AEW for both AEW and Ring of Honor are true.

“I am a signed talent at AEW.”

Starkz also gave her thoughts about getting to be involved at AEW’s WrestleDream event this past Sunday in Seattle, Washington.

“It was amazing. I’m glad that I got to be with my mentor, the Bread Man, and Keith Lee. I had a really great team and I was really excited to be facing our opponents. I got to see Lee Moriarty across the ring again, who is a really good friend of mine. It was exciting to see him get beat up.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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Jimmy Jacobs Comments on Bryan Danielson Being Responsible for Bringing Him to AEW

As noted before, Jimmy Jacobs has been signed and working as a backstage producer for AEW since this past June.

A recent episode of the AEW Unrestricted podcast featured Jacobs as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Jacobs’ thought about his experience working in AEW.

“AEW’s great. It’s a madhouse, I welcome the madness. Last year, I was living in rural Georgia, I bought about seven acres out in the middle of nowhere. I was working for IMPACT Wrestling just a couple weekends a month and I was working on a farm a couple days of week, I was living that life and I was like, ‘Hm, this is a little too mellow for me. I need to get thrown in the blender and whirl around in the chaos’, and apparently that’s where I’m best adapted for, so AEW is my home right now.”

Jacobs also stated that Bryan Danielson was the person responsible for getting him a job in the company.

“As for how I got here, Bryan Danielson called me and said, ‘Hey, we’re starting a second show and we need someone in the chaos.’ Well, I’m great in the chaos man. They needed somewhere who was going to be there at all the shows, someone who has the aptitude that I have — and there’s other people that have the aptitude that I have and can do what I do, I’m not particularly special. But also, I have no life, so it was just, can you be on the road whenever?”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

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Mike Santana Comments on His Reason for His Split from Ortiz

A recent episode of Fightful’s In The Weeds podcast featured Mike Santana as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Santana’s thoughts about his recent split from his longtime tag team partner Ortiz.

“In life, there come moments where you look back at everything and are like, ‘This was cool and great accomplishments that we did, but sometimes you want more.’ Sometimes, you don’t want to be comfortable. I’m the type of person where comfortability makes me uncomfortable, and I like that. Wrestling, just like with any job, you want to progress and you want to get better and move up and be a bigger name and do this and that. For me, personally, I realized that it’s about that time. For me. I’m happy with everything that we’ve done and with the run that we had. It was great. We got to accomplish a lot of things together. We came up together, we helped each other get through a lot of things. Sometimes, things happen for a reason. There is a lot of personal stuff, but that’s between him and me and for him and me to deal with. We decided to be professionals and we have a job. We decided to do that job. Did I initially want to do it? No, I didn’t feel like there was a need for me, personally, but we’re pros and we have a job, so let’s do our job and make the best of it and move forward.”

Santana also gave his thoughts about if his lengthy time away from wrestling due to an ACL injury helped clarify his situation with Ortiz and wanting more for his career.

“Yeah, but I was feeling like that way before the injury. I was just not in a good place mentally with anything. When you have nothing but time to think and sit with yourself, you have to put a lot of shit in perspective and have to make a lot of decisions. For me, personally, everything happened the way it needed to. I look at this injury and everything, from my dad passing away, from the struggles at work, everything happened the way it needed to happen to get me to where I am today. Today, I am the best version of myself that I’ve ever been. It is what it is. Sometimes you have to go through the shit to get to the light. The injury itself, it did a lot to me. It was definitely one of the things that it opened my eyes to. We all have a window in this business. I’m 32 years old. I’m not old, but I ain’t exactly that young either. I want to make the absolute most of my time and truly make the best of it. I want to be able to look back and be like, ‘I did that’ and be content and happy with what I’ve done. At the end of the day, my main thing now is growing and having fun doing it. I always said, just like with any job and profession, if you ain’t working to move up or get promoted or be bigger than what you are, what the hell is the point, what are you doing? Not everybody has that same mindset, and that’s okay. I’m just speaking of myself.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com