Batista Says Losing To Triple H Was His Way Of Saying Thank You

Batista was the latest guest on the Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia podcast, and he talked about why he pushed for his retirement match to be against Triple H. Batista praised HHH for the guy who made him a star in WWE, and said the only way he could think to thank him was to lose to him on the way out:

“I feel like my career really got started when I started working with Hunter. I’ve never beat around the bush—Hunter made me a star in that company. He put a lot of stock into me, he invested into me, he put himself on the line physically for me. Not only that, and not only did he put me over three times clean in the ring to help build me as a star, but he also took the time to let me ride with him, let me pick his brain and really did groom me to be a star in that company. I wanted to finish out my career with him, it’s the only way that I could say thank you, is to go out on my back for this guy. That’s the old school in me, I believe when you go out, you go out on your back. If you can go out building a star then you do that—Hunter is already a huge star—but this is the guy who made me a huge star and I want my last match to be with him on my back, because that’s literally the only way I could thank him.”

Batista went on to say that he and Triple H had always wanted to do the match, but he finally knew things would happen at WrestleMania after his SmackDown 1000 appearance last year. Batista said that segment was a way to test the waters to see if people wanted the match:

“We’d been trying to do this for years, and I knew this was going to happen at SmackDown 1000. I’m going to take credit for that, and I usually don’t like to take credit for alot, but I’ll take credit for that. I talked to Vince about it and Evolution was really never a SmackDown thing. I was a SmackDown guy, but Evolution never was, and I [said to Vince] that I want to see if there’s still interest in me and Hunter. I didn’t know if people were familiar; it’s been a long time. I said I just want to feel it out and see if they remember, and when they did and we teased the match, I knew right away that this was it. When I was leaving that night, I was leaving to go back to Toronto, Hunter is like, ‘Get in shape, motherf–ker!’”

Batista talked about getting ready for the match, and despite Triple H’s injury the match was set after he got cleared to return. The Animal said:

“I knew it was going to happen and then he hit me up, I think it was a month later, and he’s like ‘hey man, I tore my pec’ and I was [crushed] like it’s not meant to be. A couple of months later—maybe a month and a half later—he said ‘I’m going to be healed up by Mania. Do you want to do it?’ I said ‘yeah, I want to do it!’ He’s really cutting it close, like he was just cleared to start working out a couple of weeks ago, so he’s really putting it on the line. I’m 50 now, he’s going to be 50 in a couple of months, so he’s on the same page as me. He’s starting to get injured here and there over little simple things, we evolved to be doing other things and neither one of us wanted to overstay our welcome. We don’t want to be physically falling apart in front of the fan’s eyes. Nobody wants to see that.”

In regards to why he needed the match to happen, Batista said he left WWE on bad terms the last time around, and didn’t want to end things on a bad note. Batista related his situation to not getting to say goodbye to a loved one or having an argument before they passed away. He says he left wrestling and didn’t talk to anyone for while, and didn’t want to take it personally, but he did anyway.

“I didn’t feel like I had closure in my career. I don’t want to be that guy that’s 60 years old, 65 years old, with that emptiness or void that I didn’t have closure in my career. I really needed this. Personally I needed this.”

Listen to “Dave Bautista – The Need For Closure and Showing Vulnerability” on Spreaker.