Batista Talks Why He Left WWE and Why He Returned, Talks Daniel Bryan’s Success, Praises Bray Wyatt, His MMA Fight & More

In the interview they cover a lot of topics from Guardians of the Galaxy and his movie career, details about his WWE Return, Daniel Bryan, Triple H, newer superstars he’s been impressed with, and even a bit of talk about his MMA match.

The following are interview highlights:

On his WWE Departure and Return:

“I left for very specific reasons and the reasons were because there were certain opportunities I wasn’t getting when I was with the company, and we were so locked down and I mean when you’re under contract with them you’re pretty much limited to the things you can do.  You really can’t do anything else in the company without their say so and they weren’t…certain guys were getting opportunities that I wasn’t getting and I wasn’t real cool with that.  So I left to accomplish certain things, and I felt like once I accomplished them, I always wanted to come back.  At the end of the day I love professional wrestling.

We didn’t come back and demand a lot of money you know I didn’t say,’I’m not doing house shows I’m only doing Monday Night Raw.’ I mean I said, ‘I’ll do Smackdown, I’ll do house shows.’ “

On Daniel Bryan:

“For some reason I think people thought that I didn’t like Daniel Bryan or I had this personal thing.  I said a comment, I had one comment about him when he first won the world heavyweight championship and I was like, I was in shock and I said, “Okay.”  Because I just didn’t get it.  The reason I didn’t get it because it was too soon and that’s my personal opinion.  I felt it was way too soon and they did that constantly over and over.  I thought they, they just slap the title on people like, way too fast.  It’s like, I think sometimes that they used the title, I might get a little grief for saying it, sometimes I think they use the title to get guys over.  I thought it just, they did it, it was premature.  I never had a problem with him being you know, World Heavyweight Champion, I just thought that they did it way too fast.”

“Years ago, before everybody was you know on his jock, when they wanted me to job him out, and I was like, “Hell no.”  He’s just too good.  He had been coming around for years and I could never figure out why they didn’t give him a job, but he had come out and they wanted me to work a match with him, and squash him and I was like, “No, not gonna happen.”  He’s way too good man, we could have a good match, and we did.  I mean we gave ’em a version of what they wanted, but we gave ’em a hell of a match.”

On new superstars that impress him:

“I love Bray Wyatt.  I love him.  I love that whole gimmick, that whole Wyatt Family gimmick, but Bray I think he’s gonna be a huge star.  I get caught up in this guy, man.  When I watch him he’s one of those guys.  He’s another guy, I mean he doesn’t look like a stud. He’s not a statue of a man, but he is athletic as you can get, that kid can move man. He is agile, he is a stud man. That kid is as an athlete. He gets when he cuts a promo, you just get sucked in man.  He is hypnotizing. When I talk to him like personal, on a personal level, he’s one of those kids who’s not afraid to learn, he has no ego.  He’s still learning and he knows he’s still learning and he’s not afraid to ask questions, and I think that’s why he’s going to be so good.  Cause he’s this good right now and he still wants to learn.”

On his MMA fight:

“I’d like to fight again. the first one didn’t go like I wanted it to I mean I hate to say that, at fourty-five years old, but I would. It’s just the first one, it was a great experience, especially leading up to the fight. The last week was as disappointing because we lost my opponent.  Then for some reason I felt completely confident up until the point that they closed the cage. [Laughs] And then I was like, What the hell am I doing here? And I just kinda froze man and I froze long enough for Vince to get a couple really good shots on me that I mean just made me really dizzy. I was a little disappointed in myself because I didn’t think I was going to get nervous.  I did, I totally froze.”