While Vince McMahon is reviving aged superstars to grace the squared-circle again, one athlete with a lot left in him has shifted his focus to movie star aspirations.
During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Dave Bautista claimed that he won't be taking the route of his predecessors by reaffirming his retirement.
"This is a real wrestling retirement," Bautista stated. "I am done. My in-ring career is over. I would love to go back on the show because I love the company, I believe in the product, so I will go back on the show, and if they ask me to go in the Hall of Fame.... I will not have another wrestling match. I will go broke before I have another wrestling match."
He then ruled out the idea that he'd join the WWE's new competitor the AEW.
"I will not go and wrestle for another promotion," Bautista continued. "It's not going to happen."
During WrestleMania 35, Bautista fell to his former-Evolution teammate and mentor Triple H in an intense No Holds Barred Match. As the storyline suggested, this was the last time Bautista entered the ring as a WWE superstar, but the hype he created through the fight's promotion has many fans wishing their rivalry would continue. That anticipation Bautista helped build was really also a showcase for his improv chops.
"It’s weird because we got somewhere in that thing it was supposed to be that, but we didn’t really figure it out," Bautista said when explaining his "Give me what I want" speech to Van Vliet. "We didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t written out so there were certain things we were looking for in that promo and there was something I hadn’t said so he kept dragging it out.... Then it finally dawned on me that I need to say something in that promo. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but yeah that’s why it got like bigger and bigger—it wasn’t intentional."
The former wrestler has made it clear he didn't want to depend on the WWE. During his appearance at the Denver Pop Culture Con earlier this month, Bautista admitted that he almost went broke trying to prove to the world that he could make it as an actor.
"I starved for three years," Bautista claimed. "I went broke. I lost everything. I couldn’t get a job and I said that I will never go back to wrestling until I prove what I set out to prove, and that was that I can make it as an actor."
