The original idea for the club scene between Santana & Ortiz and FTR at Stadium Stampede was much different.
At AEW Double or Nothing, the second Stadium Stampede bout took place with members of The Inner Circle and The Pinnacle battling around TIAA Bank Field and Daily's Place. The scene between FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) and Santana & Ortiz took place in a club setting with Konnan making a cameo as the DJ.
Konnan set the mood with a rap song that was performed by artists Omega Sparx and Doe the Paperboy. However, AEW originally wanted, and thought they had, the rights to a DMX track.
"The original idea, I think [MJF] mentioned we should try and get DMX. To go back, when Max and I teamed, we tried to get Van Halen's 'Running With The Devil' and they came back and said it was $500,000 for a one-time use, which is a nice way of saying, 'Go fuck your ass.' If I was Tony, I would have said, 'here's a million (dollars), give it to us twice.' Frank Sinatra was a lot cheaper, but it was hard to get because Sinatra's 'Me And My Shadow,' it's the publishers who own it. When I want to use 'Judas,' I can't just use it. Sony, who owns our publishing, has to approve. So, DMX was the idea. I asked [Chief Legal Officer Megha Parekh] to get 'X Gonna Give It To Ya.' They came back and it was for, not a huge a amount of money, but not Frank Sinatra money, which was 15 grand. It was affordable and I said I would pay for half. I told Santana, 'I got a surprise for you. We got DMX!' We were all excited. A couple of days before, one of our production managers is on the field with us during the Stampede and he goes, 'I heard we don't have DMX.' Then it's a domino effect to where we were originally given permission, but the family had to sign off on it and they didn't. Once DMX was out, we were trying to find different things. We were offered Curtis Blow's 'The Breaks.' I listened and it was way too happy," said Chris Jericho on Talk is Jericho.
Santana followed up, saying he reached out to some of his friends in the music industry to try and secure a song for the scene, but ultimately came up empty.
"I was trying to reach out to friends who are part of Griselda Records like Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher, and Conway the Machine. I reached out to Smoke DZA. They are huge wrestling fans and they definitely would have let it happen. I messaged Westside Gunn the day before and he didn't see the message until Monday. He responds and is like, 'I'm so pissed I missed this. Next time you ever want anything, you have my sign-off,'" he said.
In the end, Mikey Ruckus created a beat similar to "X Gonna Give It To Ya," but made sure it was different enough to where they didn't get sued.
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