In 2005, Konnan decided it was time for a new generation of Latino talent to take pro wrestling by storm, and so he created the Latin American Xchange, or LAX, for short. In the years since, the faction has helped to launch the careers of Homicide, Hernandez, and more. Its most impressive recent run was arguably in Impact Wrestling, which they returned to in 2017, and consisted of Hernandez along with current AEW stars Diamante, Santana, and Ortiz.
In an exclusive interview for Inside The Ropes, I asked Konnan if he could see LAX reforming for another run in All Elite Wrestling.
“I don’t know because for a while here, Ortiz and Santana haven’t been seeing eye to eye, and I’ve been talking to both of them to see if they will, you know, reunite,” he revealed. “I think that the problem is that LAX, originally, the first time I ever talked to Tony, he told me about LAX, and then the next thing I knew when I inquired about it he wanted me to come in and manage it.
“And then when I inquired about it, or it might have been Cody, but when I inquired about it, Tony was like, ‘Oh, Jericho is going to use them.’ And I was like, ‘That’s a weird fit, but f-ck it,’ you know? And I love Jericho, he’s one of my best friends, but bro, he did nothing with them. I mean, absolutely nothing with them, and so these guys died a slow death and Santana was pissed off, and he has every reason to be. The guy’s f-cking uber-talented, and you’re not doing shit with him.
“So, Sonjay Dutt, who’s a very good friend of mine, he helped when we were doing the LAX vignettes, him and Jeremy Borash before he left, they were really the guys that were doing everything with me, as like a three-headed creative team, if you will. Sonjay is there, and he knows how popular LAX was because he helped with a lot of the stuff. Maybe he can one day tell Tony to bring it back. I think that we would kill it. We just had great chemistry, and we did a lot of great things.”
Santana and Ortiz were given a grand sendoff by the group when they exited Impact Wrestling and signed with AEW, and hope has always lingered that if the stable was resurrected in AEW that they would be a crucial part of it. However, as Konnan alluded to, real-life tension between the two men is said to exist, and it is unknown if they have been able to bury the hatchet. I pressed the former NWO Wolf Pac member about whether he could see the talented tag team get back on the same page.
“I hope so. I think so. Yeah,” he said, “You never know, maybe when we have our show, we’ll bring them over there, if they’re not working with AEW, you know what I’m saying?”
If you don’t know what Konnan is saying at the end there, he’s referencing the possibility that the two men could reunite in AAA, where he is the head booker. Elsewhere in the interview, he makes it clear that he intends to get AAA a weekly show on a major United States TV network.
If you use any quotes from this article please give a h/t to Haus of Wrestling for the transcription and credit Inside The Ropes