Ortiz Reveals He Almost Lost A Finger During AEW Stadium Stampede

The Inner Circle certainly like to make an entrance, as seen during the Stadium Stampede at AEW Double or Nothing 2021, when the stable rappelled down the scoreboard at TIAA Bank Field.

As spectacular as the stunt was, it nearly went very wrong, as Inner Circle’s Ortiz revealed to Digital Spy’s Stephanie Chase:

"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," he said. "I wasn't wearing gloves. 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."

Ortiz’s tag partner Santana was the first of the group to attempt the stunt, and shared his thoughts on the experience:

"That was probably one of the craziest things I've ever done in wrestling. 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.' 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 s***.’”