48 MUSCLE & FITNESS JUNE 2017
HE WAS GANGLY.No, really,
the guy you see on these pages- the man who now plays the
hulking, lovable character Drax
inGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,
hitting theaters May 5 – was
a gangly teen. Tall and skinny.
Lanky. Shy. Super shy. Awkward.
Painfully awkward. Didn’t feel
like he fit in. Almost ever.
But the one place he wasn’t
awkward, the one place where he
always fit in, was the gym. It was
his safe haven, his sanctuary, his
nest. Growing up in Washington
DC in the ’80s, Dave Bautista
always felt at home in the weights
room. Like he belonged.
“I was a gym rat,” says Bautista.
“I was a really shy, skinny, gangly,
unhealthy kid. Working out helped
me build confidence. I really
wanted to look more muscular
and not so lanky.”
At 15, the half-Filipino, half-Greek
kid started messing around with
his dad’s plastic weight set, doing
bench presses and curls. Two years
later, after his dad kicked him out
of the house to make room for a
baby he was having with his second
wife, Bautista would cut class to lift
weights. Well, sometimes he would
cut class to steal cars, taking them
for joyrides and selling off their
wheels and radios, but usually he
would cut class to lift weights.
“I went to school when I felt likegoing to school, and most of the time
I didn’t,” says Bautista, who ended
up renting a room at a friend’s place
for his final two years of high school.
“By 17, I didn’t have to answer to
anybody. I was on my own.”
Instead of studying calculus and
social studies, he was spending
most of his time at the big
bodybuilding gym in the area,
Olympus Gym. A friend got him a
job there, so when he wasn’t lifting,
he was working. “I just fell in love
with it,” says Bautista. “I practically
lived there. It was a second home.”
Then he moved out to San
Francisco for a while to reconnect
with his mother and got a job as
a personal trainer. But he didn’t
exactly love showing others the
correct way to squat. His clients
frustrated him. “I couldn’t reallyTHE BALLAD OF
BAUTISTA, PART I:AWKWARDNESS
EXPERT LIFTER
Now 48,
Bautista has
been throwing
around weight
in the gym
since he was 17.DAVE BAUTISTA