A WWE Hall of Famer has revealed that working with Batista early on in his career wasn’t always the easiest of tasks.
On May 9th 2002 Batista walked out on SmackDown for the first time. The former Leviathan appeared as the enforcer for Revered D-Von shortly after he was split up from Bubba Ray as part of the draft.
While Batista has previously spoken of his dislike of his early ‘Deacon Batista’ character, it proved to be short-lived and he was out on his own by mid-November. Although Batista went on to have a legendary run as part of Evolution and competing in feuds with the likes of The Undertaker, D-Von Dudley has revealed that the star wasn’t initially the easiest to work with.
Speaking during a recent appearance on The A2theK Wrestling Show the tag team legend explained that when the pair were first put together, the future World Champion’s training and lack of experience proved to be a problem.
“It was very difficult in the very beginning because he was such a big guy that when he was training, certain people thought that it was best to train him as a big man and not take any bumps. So by the time he got with me, I thought it was a joke, I thought somebody was playing a rib on me. Because I remember during a match with Triple H, he (Batista) was supposed to run at him with a clothesline,” D-Von added. “When I told Dave the spot, Dave looked at me and he goes ‘Rev, how do I do that?’, I just looked at him and went ‘are you serious?’”
After splitting from D-Von, Batista headed to Monday Night Raw where he formed part of Evolution alongside Ric Flair, Triple H and Randy Orton. The star went on to become a six-time World Champion and two-time Royal Rumble winning before going to conquer Hollywood.
H/t to Sportkeeda for the transciption.