While he may be a Guardian of the Galaxy now, Dave Bautista cut his teeth in the entertainment industry as WWE’s Batista in the 2000s, even winning the WWE and World Heavyweight Championships on several occasions. However, for the first time ever, the actor has revealed what drove him to make the switch to Hollywood — to show Vince McMahon’s writers he was a much better actor than what the company was allowing him to be.
“It came about out of spite. First of all, it came from me discovering I was a horrible actor and I wanted to become a better actor,” he said on British sports talk show, Hawksbee & Jacobs. “And I wanted to do it while I was still with WWE. They would not give me the opportunity to do it within the company. so I said, ‘I should be given the opportunity to do it outside of the company.’ They said, ‘Absolutely not.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m going to let my contract run out, and I’m gonna leave.’ So that’s exactly what I did – I set out to be an actor.”
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Bautista left the WWE in 2010 to pursue his acting career, which saw him in minor roles in Scorpion King 3, The Man with the Iron Fists and Riddick, before making the move to Marvel Studios as Drax the Destroyer in 2014.
“It was brave and maybe a little stupid. [laughs] It was three years of me barely working,” he continued. “You know, it was a nice thing with the WWE. I made a very good living there. I was very comfortable and I could have stuck with that, but I wanted to do something else.”
"It was brave, and maybe a little stupid!"@DaveBautista tells @tSHandJ about his move from the #WWE to Hollywood superstar