David Michael Bautista Jr. is an American actor and former pro wrestler who was born on January 18, 1969. Between 2002 and 2019, he was in WWE more than once. Since Guardians of the Galaxy, which came out in 2014, he is best known for playing Drax the Destroyer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Dave Bautista: Fighting Career Details
Bautista went to the Wild Samoan Training Center wrestling school in 1999 to learn how to be a professional wrestler. After that, he became a professional wrestler, but he later went back to training in Muay Thai, Eskrima, and Jiu-Jitsu. In the second case, he learned from Cesar Gracie.
Even though Bautista signed with the WWF in 2000, he got his start in Ohio Valley Wrestling. He was fighting under the name “Leviathan” at that time. In his first few fights, he never lost, but then Kane and Steve Austin beat him. He won the OVW Heavyweight Championship in the end and was then moved up to the main roster of WWE.
Bautista didn’t take part in a WWE event that was shown on TV until 2002. He changed his stage name to “Deacon Batista” at this point. In his early days, Bautista fought with D-Von and won a lot of fights with them. In the end, Bautista betrayed D-Von, and they had a long fight. He joined Evolution in 2003, along with Ric Flair. Evolution went on to be a very successful team that won a lot of titles over time. Over time, there were problems on the Evolution team because Triple H saw Bautista as a threat.
Bautista won the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania 21. He did this by betraying his own teammates on the Evolution team. Fans bought more than 1.09 million PPVs of the event, which is mostly because Bautista is so popular. The next 282 days were the longest time anyone had ever spent as World Heavyweight Champion. In the end, he had to give up the championship because his triceps kept tearing.
In 2010, Dave Bautista fought Vince Lucero in his one and only MMA match. Bautista won in the first round with a TKO.
Even though he had to have surgery on his arm, he went back to WWE to fight for the title again. Over the next few years, he won and lost the title several times, and arm injuries kept getting in the way. But he famously used this to his advantage when he used a fake arm vice to trick Randy Orton into letting his guard down. Even though he kept fighting for the next few years, Bautista’s injuries were starting to catch up with him. After a match with John Cena, he did, in fact, hurt his L1 spine and later showed up in a wheelchair.
Fans started to boo Bautista beginning in 2013. This led to Bautista’s slow fall, which led to him leaving the WWE. Bautista said publicly that he quit because Triple H wouldn’t give him a chance at the title, but behind closed doors, they had “creative differences” that led to the split. Still, Bautista did come back to WWE in 2018 for one last match against Triple H, which he lost and then quit for good in 2019.
Dave Bautista: Acting Career Details
Dave Bautista has acted for a long time. He was on Smallville’s sixth season and played an alien bad guy. In 2009, he made a brief appearance on the Australian soap opera Neighbours. He was in the action-comedy show Chuck in 2010. During the next few years, he was in movies such as Relative Strangers and Wrong Side of Town. In the 2012 movie The Man with the Iron Fists, Bautista was able to show off his martial arts skills and have more success in the movie business.
In 2014, he had a big part in Guardians of the Galaxy, which may have been his biggest break in the movie business. With this part, Dave Bautista showed how good an actor he was, and Hollywood had no choice but to take him seriously. In 2015, he played Mr. Hinx, a bad guy who kills people, in the James Bond movie Spectre. After working with Georges St-Pierre in Kickboxer, Bautista played a replicant in Blade Runner 2049, which was another big movie role.
Then, in the 2017 movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, he played Drax again. Bautista got parts in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame after he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In 2019, it was announced that Bautista would have a big part in the movie Dune, which will come out in 2020. In addition, Bautista has been in a lot of other movies and TV shows.
Dave Bautista: Net Worth
Dave Bautista is an American actor, professional mixed martial artist, and professional wrestler with a net worth of $16 million as of 2023. Bautista started out as a professional fighter, but he later switched to acting and did very well at it. Both in the movie business and in the world of professional fighting, he has a lot of fans because of his work.
Favorite Quotes By Dave Bautista
“I’m not afraid to go up to people and pick their brains and ask for advice. To me, that’s how you get better. That’s how I’ve gotten better at everything I’ve ever done. Don’t be too proud to ask for help.”
“If you’re pursuing something that you love and you’re learning something new, every day, that’s the key to youth [staying young].”
“I didn’t want to be a movie star. I wanted to be an actor. Because acting is what I fell in love with, and acting is what is still challenging for me.”
“I’m a poor kid from the streets. What I’ve been able to achieve has really just been through hard work and not letting anyone tell me that I couldn’t do something. I always try to encourage people just to pursue their dreams.”
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