| Batista
Unleashed People
around the world know Dave Batista as World Wrestling
Entertainment's "the Animal," the rope-shaking, spine-busting
World Heavyweight Champion, one of the most popular Superstars
in recent years.The crowd turned Batista from heel to babyface
after they were electrified by his awesome physique and physical
wrestling style.
Few fans, however, know that
Batista didn't join the profession until he was thirty years old
-- an age at which many wrestlers are thinking about hanging up
their boots. Nor do most fans know the tremendous toll the climb
to the top has taken on Batista's personal life. While
successfully staying away from hard drugs and -- usually --
liquor, he found sex too tempting to resist.
"Women were my drug of choice,"
the Animal confesses. That addiction cost him his marriage,
destroying a relationship that had helped him climb from poverty
to the pinnacle of sports entertainment in less than two years.
Now, in Batista Unleashed, the
WWE Superstar comes clean about the choices he made and the
devastating effects they had on his family. He talks about the
injury that stripped him of his title -- an injury he blames on
Mark Henry's carelessness. While being sidelined cost Batista
untold hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income, it also
set the stage for a tremendous comeback that cemented the
Animal's reputation as a true champion.
Batista talks about growing up in
the worst part of Washington, D.C., where three murders occurred
in his front yard before he was nine. He speaks lovingly about
his mother -- a lesbian -- and how hard she worked to keep the
family not just together but alive. He talks candidly about his
own criminal past: a conviction on a drug charge and another,
since overturned, on assault. He speaks of his days as a bouncer
and a lifeguard, and tells how bodybuilding may have saved his
life.
Once he made it to the WWE,
Batista realized he wasn't really ready for the big time. His
career seemed headed for a fall until Fit Finlay took him under
his wing. But his real education came when he joined Evolution
and rode with Triple H and Ric Flair, two of sports
entertainment's all-time greats. Batista talks about what they
taught him, and details some of their wild times on the road.
But the champ also reveals a
kinder, gentler side. While his soft-spoken manner in the locker
room has sometimes been misinterpreted as arrogance, in truth
Batista's always been somewhat shy and quiet. Emotional by
nature, he reveals for the first time that the tears fans saw at
WrestleMania 21, when he won the World Heavyweight Championship
for the first time, were very real. And he speaks movingly about
his problems with his ex-wives and teenage daughters, and how it
felt to become a grandfather.
While his straight-shooting mouth
has occasionally gotten him into trouble -- most notably in a
backstage confrontation with Undertaker after some remarks about
SmackDown! -- Batista is his own harshest critic. He explains
his early limitations as a wrestler and the work he has done to
overcome them. Interspersing his memoir with accounts from life
on the road, Batista lightens the narrative with a surprising
sense of humor. An Animal in the ring, he reveals himself as an
honest and even humble man in everyday life.
Written by: Dave Batista & Jeremy
Roberts
Year Published: October 16, 2007
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