The Sandman believes Batista’s in-ring work gets overrated, and that the former World Heavyweight Champion would have been better served in a different kind of match.
The ECW original made the comments on episode 135 of The Sandman Podcast, where he and the panel reviewed the June 2006 ECW Arena house show that WWE’s Vault channel on YouTube recently released. The discussion turned to how WWE booked the ECW relaunch after that show, with main events built around WWE stars like Big Show, Batista and Bobby Lashley rather than the ECW originals and the young talent underneath them.
“Batista probably would have been way better in a hardcore situation than a regular match,” The Sandman said.
Host Brian W. Tosh defended Batista’s in-ring record, saying he was very good at certain points and had a lot of really good matches. The Sandman acknowledged Batista’s presence in the ring, but did not move off his assessment. “Everybody knows he was a mid-level worker,” he said, before adding, “but he had it. He used it.”
Tosh pointed to what Batista became. “There’s a reason he’s in Hollywood,” Tosh said, calling him a super successful guy. Another member of the panel said Batista could have been a perfect looking fit for ECW. The Sandman closed the point by repeating that his argument was about style rather than a burial. “I thought he would have had good hardcore matches,” he said.
The exchange came out of a larger conversation about why the 2006 ECW relaunch failed. The panel argued the brand pushed WWE stars to the top of ECW instead of using the originals to elevate the next generation, pointing out that within months of the ECW Arena show, the brand’s main events featured matchups like Big Show against Batista and Bob Holly against Lashley. The Sandman was blunt about the relaunch as a whole, asking why Vince McMahon would ever let that company get over more than his own, and saying it was doomed to fail from the start.
Batista went on to become one of the biggest stars of his era, a six-time world champion and two-time Royal Rumble winner who headlined WrestleManias before a Hollywood career that has included Guardians of the Galaxy, Dune and Knives Out. Batista worked on the ECW brand came in that same 2006 period, when he was among the main roster names WWE programmed against ECW talent.
The Sandman’s point was that a performer with Batista’s size and aura could have thrived in an environment built around brawling and weapons rather than traditional matches. The Sandman said the same thinking applied to other big men in ECW’s history, noting earlier in the episode that guys like Roadkill and Bubba Ray Dudley could do everything the smaller wrestlers did.
The Sandman spent most of the episode revisiting the June 2006 show itself, which took place 11 days after ECW returned on Syfy. He admitted he has no memory of the night despite winning his match against Justin Credible, and the panel covered Paul Heyman’s post-show promo to the crowd, CM Punk’s early ECW appearance against Stevie Richards, and Rob Van Dam and Kurt Angle in the main event. The Sandman also praised Big Show elsewhere in the episode, telling a story about Show bleeding for him in a match without telling him beforehand, and calling him a Philly boy who was one of the boys.
The full episode also touched on Rob Van Dam’s 2006 run as ECW and WWE Champion, with The Sandman saying Van Dam’s career would have been twice what it was without the arrest that derailed it, and calling him a super Hall of Famer type.
