Dave Bautista arrived in WWE with the size and athleticism to be pushed straight to the top. He says that is exactly why the locker room did not want him there.
Speaking on the Live Fierce podcast with W.O.L.F Gyms co-owner Cale Owen, Bautista was clear that he is describing his own era and not the company today.
“I always speak to how it was when I was there. I don’t know how it is now. It’s very different now,” Bautista said. “But when I was there, there’s limited spots, and a bunch of guys who have been around there and they’re still kind of fighting their way to get up the totem pole. And they see a guy come walking through the door who’s six four, who’s athletic, and who has potential. They’re like, f*ck, this guy might steal one of our spots. So it becomes hostile.”
He said the wrestlers willing to help were the outliers.
“There’s a few guys who are secure with themselves, secure with their position in the company, who will help you out. But that’s not the standard. That’s the exception, or it was when I was there,” Bautista said.
For someone who describes himself as naturally quiet, it was a difficult room to walk into.
“It was not only challenging mentally, physically, also not being home, kind of my family life falling apart, but also it was a hostile environment,” Bautista said. “For a guy like me who was pretty much introverted and a pretty kind soul, I don’t want to piss anybody off. It was unpleasant.”
The insecurity followed him for a long time.
“Even when I got to WWE, I wasn’t prepared. I thought any day I was going to get fired,” Bautista said. “Some people took me under their wing and really helped me out, and I was able to kind of persevere and make it there.”
What wore him down, he said, was having to armor up every night.
“I’ve spent my 20s postured up. My whole fcking 20s, I was postured up, and it wasn’t who I was. Most of the wrestling, I was postured up,” Bautista said. “That’s why I was so fcking unhappy there, because the locker room forced me to be somebody I wasn’t.”
Eventually the defensive posture turned into something else.
“There was a point where I just got exhausted from being defensive all the time, so I started becoming offensive,” Bautista said. “I started to be kind of a dick. Like, f*ck you, I’m not going to let you make me feel this way. I’m going to be a dick to you before you’re a dick to me.”
He suspects that cycle explains plenty of the people he came up against.
“I think a lot of the people became dicks because they were tired of being a target,” Bautista said. “There’s only so much you can take before you’re just not willing to take it anymore. But that wasn’t who I was, and so I was very unhappy there.”
That is why walking out in 2010 landed the way it did.
“The day I walked out of there in 2010 was one of the happiest days of my life. It was one of the saddest days of my life, but also one of the happiest, because all that pressure was gone,” Bautista said. “All the pressure of forcing me to be who I wasn’t was gone. But also, I left behind something I loved more than anything in the world.”
Bautista returned to WWE in 2014 and again in 2019, wrestling his final match against Triple H at WrestleMania 35 before retiring.
