JUNE 2017 MUSCLE & FITNESS 49relate to people who didn’t put
in the same effort that I did,”
says Bautista. “Sometimes I
tried to force them to. It kind
of turned people off.”
So what is a big, muscle-bound
guy without a university education
who doesn’t enjoy personal training
supposed to do? Be a bouncer,
obviously. He got his first gig
bouncing at 17. He started in a few
bars. In his early 20s, he bounced
at a huge dance club called Lulu’s.
Then he progressed to VIP rooms
at parties around town. He had the
time. You have your days free to do
whatever you want. You train, eat,
sleep and go to work. You get
off work, you go back to the
gym, you go home and sleep
all day. And 10 years later, you
got nothing to show for it.”
Did he save any money? Ha! He
laughs at the question. “I worked to
make it through the week,” he says.
“I wasn’t concerned about putting a
stash away. I was Forrest Gump-ing
my way through life. My whole lifewas kind of accidental.”
The lowest point was one
Christmas. By then he had children,
and he had no money to buy them
presents. He was forced to ask for
an advance from a club promoter.
“That was when I decided that
I needed to do something,” says
Bautista, who was closing in on
30 at the time. “I needed to find
a real job or some other way to
make money. It was like, ‘What
am I qualified for?’ ”image that club promoters coveted
- the huge, intimidating guy. Back
then, he was even bigger than he is
now. Much bigger. “Like 350, 360,”
[159-163kg] he says. “I was huge.”
Occasionally he would get
arrested. “When I was bouncing,
I had a few assault charges,” he
admits. “I was always in a lose-lose
situation. Whether I was in the
right or not, the cops would show
up and I looked like I did, and I
was in a fight and somebody was
bleeding and I wasn’t. I usually
went to jail.”
But it was a life. “I loved
bouncing,” says Bautista. “You get
spoiled by it. It’s easy work. You’re
kind of hanging out most of the
I needed to find
a real job or
some other
way to make
money. It was
like, ‘What am
I qualified for?’
DAVE BAUTISTA