D.C.’s Batista ready to rumble
D.C.’s Batista ready to rumble
By Brian Truitt
Examiner Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, February 26, 2006 7:36 PM EST
For Dave Batista, the powerbombing’s easy. Taking a fellow wrestler’s head off with a clothesline? No sweat. It’s only when he has to get in front of thousands of people and talk, or make out with an attractive female manager on camera, that his lifelong shyness kicks in.
The well-muscled, Northern Virginia-raised wrestler returns to his old haunts tonight for an appearance at MCI for the WWE’s Supershow, although he won’t be wrestling. Seven weeks ago, Batista tore his sizable right tricep during a televised match and had to give up his WWE championship belt – he expects to return to the ring in mid-April.
"There’s no good time to get injured, but there couldn’t be a worse time than when you’re really carrying a lot of weight on your shoulders as far as holding the belt, and a lot of responsibility comes with holding that belt," Batista says.
He was a bouncer in Washington and an amateur bodybuilder when he got the itch for pro wrestling. Ironically, in 1999 he was actually thrown out of the MCI Center when he walked in looking for the WWE’s talent-relations man. Batista went up to a Pennsylvania training camp for a year, tried out for WWE and was awarded a contract. He was assigned to the minor-league Ohio Valley Wrestling and then, after being groomed for main-event status by the likes of Ric Flair and Paul "Triple H" Levesque, moved up the wrestling hierarchy.
Batista admits, though, that getting on a microphone is far more nerve-racking than the athletic side of wrestling.
"It’s hard for me to get in front of all those people and speak," Batista says. "You’ll still see it occasionally, the shyness.
"There was always that side of me that wanted to be an entertainer, but I thought it would be on the bodybuilding stage."
Recently, before his injury, Batista had to tape a backstage segment for an angle where he kissed Melina Perez, another shy performer. "It was the strangest thing I’ve ever done," he says. "I didn’t know her that well and it was like kissing a stranger. It was just an odd feeling. It wasn’t comfortable."
Batista feels his passion for wrestling and just getting in front of audiences has helped him to overcome his introversion, yet there is still a part of him that worries about it affecting his abilities.
"I still always have doubts and I still always get stage fright," he says. "Before I go out for a match or speak or whatever, I still get a case of dry heaves. Seriously. It’s really bad.
"But when you walk out the curtain and you hear the music and the people, your adrenaline takes over and you lose those inhibitions."
source: http://www.dcexaminer.com
