Batista has heard the “one more match” rumors for years. He wants it on record, one more time, that it’s never happening.
“I Will Go F**king Broke And Be Poor”
In a new interview with W.O.L.F. Gyms‘ Cale Owen, Batista laid out exactly why he’s closed the door on wrestling for good, and why nothing could change his mind.
“I left the company on good terms. I left at the height of my career. It was hard as f**k to walk away, cause I walked away and I went broke,” he said. “It was nice having that check come in every week, but I walked away because the company was heading in a direction that just wasn’t right for me. It worked out, I was lucky it worked out.”
“I walked away as champ, I walked away on top,” he continued. “It’s hard to walk away. Most people don’t walk away. And this is why it’s such a running joke when wrestlers retire, because they never retire. They retire like five times… If I go broke again, I know what it’s like to be poor. I don’t like being poor, but I know what it’s like, and I will go f**king broke and be poor before I ever go back to wrestling.”
“I will never wrestle again,” he added. “I went out the way I wanted, the guy I wanted to go out with. It’s never going to be that good again and I just won’t tarnish it.”
The Broke Years
That storybook ending wasn’t always the plan. Batista got into wrestling out of pure necessity, not passion, at least at first.
“I got into wrestling because I wanted to make money. Cause I was f**king desperate, I was poor, I had two kids and not a dime to my name,” he said. “After a while I became obsessed with it, and I would have wrestled for free because I just loved it so much. Making a good living, wrestling was kind of a side effect.”
The early years were rough even after he made the roster. In a companion interview from the same sit-down, Batista got specific about just how broke he was before winning his first World Heavyweight Championship in 2005.
“When I was wrestling, they pretty much provided you with airfare, and that was it. Not food, not cars, not hotels, none of that. So my first few years of wrestling I was broke,” he said. “I used to go to those check cashing places and get like a $300 loan. And then you’d come back, pay it and borrow another 300 and do that week after week. That around 2005 is when I didn’t have to do that anymore and I started to make money. But until then I was grinding.”
Why Hollywood Feels Like “Gravy”
Batista has spent the years since his 2019 retirement building a genuine second career in film, and he says the contrast with wrestling isn’t close.
“I always tell everybody coming from wrestling, this is gravy,” he said. “Because when I was in wrestling, not only was I grinding and grinding harder and it was in a different spot every night. That’s a luxury about film making. You’re typically in the same place for long periods of time. Whereas wrestling, you’re changing talents every night, every day. You’re moving, moving, hustling. Also nobody’s catering to you. Nobody is setting up stuff for you. You don’t have a trailer. It’s not people there helping you with things and moving you along and making your life easier.”
Batista won the World Heavyweight Championship for the first time in 2005 and went on to become a six-time world champion before wrestling his final match at WrestleMania 35 against Triple H, closing the book on a rivalry that traced back to their days together in Evolution. Nearly seven years later, by his own account, he’s not remotely tempted to open it back up.
