Ex-WWE champion Dave Bautista ‘killing’ himself to get slim after fries, pancakes made him ‘fat’: ‘People are worried’

Dave Bautista, the former WWE champion, has opened up about his significant weight loss, revealing he was unhappy with his changing physique.

Known by his in-ring name ‘Batista’, the 55-year-old wrestler-turned-actor has shed an impressive 80 pounds, dropping from 320 pounds to 240. While he may no longer be as muscular as he once was, Bautista is content and at peace with his current body.

Bautista feels that he had gotten too fat and big, which had begun costing him acting gigs. Known to play the character Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy series in the Marvel world, Bautista’s upcoming film, the Killer’s Game, is due to release in four days, but as he explores and ventures into other projects, Dave knew he had to lean down.

“I started trimming down for a particular reason. Why I did it is because I got fat. I got really big for a role, rather uncomfortably big. I was around 315 pounds and put on weight really fast. When I was younger, I was carrying lots of muscle. This weight I put on between films and gained it rather quickly with French fries and pancakes. The director told me ‘I don’t want you to look like a power-lifter. I just want you to look like this great big guy’ And now looking back, I think I overdid it. It took me forever to shed it off,” Bautista told Chris Van Vliet on his podcast.

“Then I noticed the more I trimmed down, the better I look on camera, next to other actors. The more I trimmed down, the better I feel. People tell me ‘you’re skinny’. I saw online that people are worried about my health. I say it out loud to people I am 6’4 and 240 pounds. But to me, because people have seen me so much over the years, I am still a big human being. I am killing myself to be this trim, I am training hard. My calories are pretty restricted. Maybe 2500 a day.”

Summary of Bautista’s in-ring career

As he pointed out, Bautista used to be a huge dude back when he was with the WWE full-time, all the way from starting out at the OVW (Ohio Valley Wrestling) in the year 2000, now NXT, to his final match at WrestleMania 35 in 2019. A four-time World Heavyweight Champion and a two-time WWE Champion, ‘Batista’ was always around the 320 LBS mark as he feuded with the who’s who of WWE superstars including Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, John Cena, Randy Orton, Edge, Rey Mysterio and so many more. In 2009, Batista’s full-time in-ring career came to an end as he walked away from the WWE to pursue a career in acting.

Five years later, Batista returned and won the 2014 Royal Rumble, earning himself a spot in the main event at WrestleMania 30, but lost to Daniel Bryan after tapping out to the ‘Yes Lock’. Batista’s return was short-lived as he departed for another five years. Finally, in 2019, his professional wrestling career winded up as he faced his long-time mentor Triple H, losing to the Game, but going out on his terms and extremely satisfied.