50 MUSCLE & FITNESS JUNE 2017
THE WRESTLERBautista, a WWE star,
had one MMA pro fight. He won.HE CALLS THEdecision to try
his hand at professional wrestling
a “process of elimination”.
“Wrestling was really smoking
hot at that time,” Bautista recalls.
“It seemed like all the guys on
TV were huge. I thought I could
fit that mould.”
Soon he found himself in
Minneapolis, trying out for World
Championship Wrestling. And
failing miserably. The guy holding
the tryouts ran him into the
ground. At the time, Bautista was
193cm, 147 kilos and super ripped.
This guy was maybe 178cm, 95
kilos. “I think he took offence that
I was huge and jacked and he was
not,” recalls Bautista. “I think he
thought, ‘This is another big guy
who can’t wrestle, and he’s going
to come in here and take another
spot just because he looks like that,
and I’m not going to let it happen’.”
The guy’s efforts worked –
momentarily. “I was going to goback and try again after I got into
better cardio shape,” says Bautista.
“But then I started exploring
other avenues.” He reached out to
WWE (known then as the World
Wrestling Federation), and they
suggested he go to a wrestling
camp, which is how Bautista
wound up in Pennsylvania for a
year, using borrowed money to
enroll at the Wild Samoan Pro
Wrestling Training Center.
He suffered a few injuries, but
over the next 12 months he learned
the craft – everything from body
slams and suplexes to developing
a persona. Once he obtained all
the tools to perform, WWE tooknotice and offered him a low-paying
developmental contract. Now he
was getting paid to learn how to
wrestle – not that he felt like he was
on his way to greatness or anything.
“I thought it could be over any
day,” says Bautista. “Because there
were a lot of guys who were on the
payroll one day and they were off
the next. But I’m really big at seizing
opportunities. If you give me an
opportunity, I’ll be all over it.”
Bautista grabbed his chance with
the WWE and never let go. He
made his professional wrestling
debut in 2000 under the ring name
Leviathan. A couple of years later,
he made his televised WWE debut
on an episode of SmackDown as a
villain named Deacon Batista. The
“Deacon” moniker didn’t last, and
he soon began to operate simply
as Batista. Within a few years, he
became one of the biggest stars of
WWE, winning the WWE World
Heavyweight Championship four
times and the WWE Championship
twice. But still he didn’t feel like
he’d “made it”.
“I was multi world champion
and I still went through times
where I thought, ‘Man, I’m going to
lose my job, they’re gonna fire me, I
know they’re gonna fire me’, ” says
Bautista. “I went through that my
whole career.”
Was it paranoia? Bautista says it
was more like taking nothing for
granted. “My feeling is, just never
be comfortable,” he says. “Never
get too comfortable.”
So is that still the case? “Oh,
for sure,” he says. “Even with
acting. It’s a constant argument
that I have with my agent. I
don’t like coming off a job and not
knowing when my next job is.
I want to know what I’m doing
next. Because I got into this
really late. And where I fit in this
business is even smaller than
where I fit in wrestling. There’s
just not much room for ageing
actors that look like gorillas.”THE BALLAD OF
BAUTISTA, PART II:PRO WRESTLING
J. SHEARER/GETTY IMAGESDAVE BAUTISTA