Dave Bautista Biography
David Michael Bautista Jr. is a retired professional wrestler, now actor, born on January 18, 1969. Before pursuing a career in wrestling, Bautista worked as a nightclub bouncer and a lifeguard. After having a breakdown, he decided to become a wrestler and began his wrestling career in 1999.
Dave Bautista gained fame under the ring name Batista and became a six-time world champion by winning the World Heavyweight Championship four times and the WWE Championship twice.
He also held the World Tag Team Championship three times and the WWE Tag Team Championship once. Bautista won a total of eleven championships throughout his wrestling career. He headlined WrestleMania 21 and WrestleMania XXX and won the 2005 Royal Rumble match.
After retiring from wrestling, Dave Bautista pursued acting and guest-starred in several television shows as both himself and in-character as Batista. He played Drax the Destroyer in the 2014 Marvel Studios film Guardians of the Galaxy, which was a critical and commercial success. He reprised his role as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.
Bautista also had a villainous role in the James Bond film Spectre playing the formidable henchman Mr Hinx. He also starred in the reboot of the 1989 martial arts film Kickboxer. Bautista has been vocal in his support of Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and threatened to ask for recasting if Disney did not use Gunn’s script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. He starred in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead and had a villainous role in Dune, which received glowing reviews.
Dave Bautista has been married three times and has three children. He married his third wife, competitive pole dancer Sarah Jade in 2015, but they separated in early 2019.