Former WWE star Dave “Batista” Bautista recently spoke with DailyDead.com at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and below are some interview highlights:
Interviewer: I just want to say on a personal level, being somebody who’s enjoyed watching your career as a wrestler, too, I was so incredibly bummed about how everything went when you came back in 2014. I was so excited to see you come back, and I’m glad that you’re moving on in movies now, but I feel so bad because you deserved more than you got out of that situation and it still makes me sad as a fan.
Dave Bautista: It really sucked. It didn’t have anything to do with me or anything, there was just a lot going on behind the scenes.
Interviewer: Well, creative was a mess back then, too.
Dave Bautista: It was the company, man. They really just screwed me over. I was banging my head against the wall every day. It’s one of those things, I wish people knew how hard I fought to be there and how hard I fought to just give them the best matches and performances that I could. But it was an everyday struggle dealing with the company. It was such a f***ing nightmare.
Interviewer: I’m so sorry.
Dave Bautista: I stayed longer than I should have, actually. You followed it pretty closely back then?
Interviewer: I did, and still am, yes.
Dave Bautista: What most fans don’t realize is that I stayed an extra month. The reason I had to leave was because I had to go and do press for Marvel for Guardians of the Galaxy. They were actually nice enough to let me stay an extra month. They wanted me to stay that extra month and work with Daniel Bryan at another pay-per-view, but I just thought that didn’t even make sense.
We were just starting the Evolution thing, so why couldn’t we run with that instead of me putting Daniel over again, which I just did at WrestleMania? We’re not going to have a better match there than we did at Mania. Let’s just work more with Evolution and build these guys up. So we did. Then right after we built the hell out of them and they were so strong as a unit, they broke them all up. I said, “What is wrong with you guys?”
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
