In an interview with The Chad Dukes Wrestling Show as part of their “WrestleMania Spectacular”, WWE superstar Batista commented on his return to the company, why he’s so selective on movie roles, WWE’s current talent and who he’s a fan of and more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On his return to the WWE: “I left for very specific reasons and the reasons were because there were certain opportunities I wasn’t getting when I was with the company and we were so locked down and I mean when you’re under contract with them you’re pretty much limited to the things you can do, you really can’t do anything else in the company without their say so and they weren’t, certain guys were getting opportunities that I wasn’t getting and I wasn’t real cool with that, so I left to accomplish certain things and I felt like once I accomplished them, I always wanted to come back. At the end of the day, I love professional wrestling, I really, really do man, so it’s not like I never planned to come back, I wanted to come back sooner, it’s just that, you know, it took me longer to accomplish certain things that I really want to accomplish. I didn’t want to be working and do one movie a year, it’s just, I was out there auditioning and stuff, these were the jobs I was getting and once I landed it, you know the Marvel deals, I felt like I accomplished everything I wanted to and then some. We didn’t come back and demand a lot of money you know, I didn’t say I’m not doing house shows, I’m only doing Monday Night RAW. I mean I said, I’ll do SmackDown and I’ll do house shows.”
On why he’s so selective with movie roles: “I got offered a lot of roles, coming out of wrestling on stuff that was going straight-to-DVD and it wasn’t the stuff that I wanted to do and I really wanted like, really good projects. I really, I really had a passion for acting and I really wanted to become a better actor, so I passed up on a lot of that stuff and held out for like better roles and stuff that will put me next to guys who were really established actors, so I could kind of learn from them, so it wasn’t easy man. I got out there and pounded the pavement.”
On how he could have “heat” from Daniel Bryan fans coming from a tweet back in 2011: “For some reason, I think people thought that I didn’t like Daniel Bryan or that I had this personal thing. I said a comment, I had one comment about him when he first won the World Heavyweight Championship and I was like, I was in shock and I said “Okay”, because I just didn’t get it. The reason I didn’t get it because it was too soon and that’s my personal opinion, I felt it was way too soon and they did that constantly over and over, I thought they just slapped the titled on people like way too fast, it’s like, I might get a little grief for saying it, sometimes I think they used the title to get guys over, I though it was just premature, I never had a problem with him being World Heavyweight Champion, I just thought that they did it way too fast. You can’t convince me that somebody else was a bigger supporter of Daniel Bryan because I mean that was years ago, when they wanted me to job him out and I was like “Hell No”, he’s just too good. He had been coming around for years and I could never figure out why they didn’t give him a job, but he had come out and they wanted me to work a match with him and squash him and I was like “No, not going to happen”. He’s way too good man, we could have a good match and we did, I mean we gave them a version of what they wanted, but we gave them a hell of a match. It looked like a competitive match, when at the time it’s not what they wanted.”
On WWE’s current talent and stars that are impressing him: “I love Bray Wyatt, I love him, I love that whole gimmick, that whole Wyatt Family gimmick, but Bray, I think he’s going to be a huge star, I get caught up in this guy man. When I watch him, he’s one of those guys, he’s another guy, I mean he doesn’t look like a stud, he’s not a statue of a man, but he is athletic as you can get, that kid can move man, he is agile, he is a stud man, that kid is an athlete. He gets me when he cuts a promo, you just get suck in man, he is hypnotizing. When I talk to him like on a personal level, he’s one of those kids who’s not afraid to learn, he has no ego, he’s still learning and he knows he’s still learning and he’s not afraid to ask quetions and I think that’s why he’s going to be so good because he’s this good right now and he still wants to learn. I love the whole Shield gimmick, everyone’s real focused on Roman and I think he’s definitely going to be a huge star, but Dean Ambrose to me, he’s the star of that.”
