Dave ‘Batista’ Bautista made his MMA debut (= Dave Batista vs Vince Lucero) Saturday Night earning a first-round TKO win over the veteran Vince Lucero. But, as we know, the performance wasn’t really good, and there were critics about his slowness and clumsiness. Unlike other former pro wrestlers as Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashely who passed to MMA, Bautista had no amateur wrestling experience. Because of that, WWE champion CM Punk says that Bautista deserves more time to be judged:
“It’s definitely a bucket-list kind of thing. I think it’s awesome, too. Dave just wanted the experience. He wanted to fight even if it was just one time. It was something that he wanted to do. He loves it so he put his mind to it and did it, and I think that amazing. I don’t think anybody can criticize that. He has no delusions of grandeur. He’s not trying to get a big, fat UFC contract. He’s not trying to coast on his name from the WWE. He’s just fighting because he wanted to experience it.”
The 43-year-old ‘The Animal’ has made loads of money during his wwe career and he made movies, but mixed martial arts has been a passion of his for some time, and he always wanted to try it.
Punk saw that Bautista looked “really nervous” but was impressed by how he overcome the butterflies to get victory. He admires Dave for his courage: “The haters, if you’re doing something right you’re going to get criticized. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of people who can do what Dave did, and those are the ones that are going to criticize him. To me, those are the funniest ones. They say funny stuff. They make the funniest comments and they’re fun to laugh at.”
In few words: don’t give up Batista!
Video: Top 15 moves of Dave “The Animal” Batista