During a recent edition of “The Ross Report” podcast, former World Heavyweight Champion Batista revealed that he wants to return to WWE and has talked to Vince McMahon recently regarding this. Below is his discussion with Jim Ross:
Batista: Well, that’s been the issue for me because I’ve never burned that bridge man because I still love wrestling and everybody in the WWE has always been really good to me. I have my gripes with the company which I’m sure everybody does, but at the same time I don’t ever disrespect the company intentionally. I don’t really have any reason to.
I didn’t leave there under bad circumstances. I left just because I wanted to pursue other things. I didn’t walk out on them. I let my contract run out. They knew I was going to be leaving. So I did business the right way and I’m really thankful that I did. The short answer to that is yes. I would love to go back.
But the reason I have not gone back is because I don’t want to do a one-off. I want to go and I want to wrestle. I want to do some house shows. I want to be a part of the program and I love it. The one-off thing, the cheap hop thing, just doesn’t do anything for me.
I stay in touch, man, I’ve talked to Vince recently and he knows what I want. I’ve made it very clear that I wanted to go back and run a program with Hunter (Triple H). I’ve been very public about it and I think that’s the thing that would get me back. There’s so much history there. It’d be easy story to tell.
We wouldn’t have to spend all that much time telling the story and we could get right back in the flow. And also if I am a little rusty or a lot rusty, Hunter is just, to me, he’s just the best that has ever been. So I could really just kind of fall into his groove.
Last time I went back, they just had no idea what they wanted to do with me. I just came back, they didn’t have a plan. So they actually had Ziggler tweet out something like calling me out one night and that was how they built the program which I was not happy about. That’s such a waste of time.
When it came time to argue with Vince, which you know, sometimes I did and I pi$$ed him off a lot. I pi$$ed him off to the point where he actually said to me one day – “You know what I want to do right now? I want to slap the sh*t out of you”.
I was like – I can believe you are saying this to me. All I could do is laugh and he just got more pi$$ed. I think it got to the point where I think Vince knew that I was in it for the right reasons. I think he knew that I wanted to be there and I was good for the company, I was a company guy.
So I think it was the right time. If I had done it any sooner then I may not have had the job for that much longer. Vince can smell a bullsh*tter. He knows if you’re trying to just kiss his a$$.
Just don’t give them a reason to not want to do business with you. If you’re there to do business, you want to make money for the company, you want to entertain people, you’re there for the right reasons, then yeah they’re going to want to have a relationship.
And if they’re lucky enough to make it through the door I usually just tell them to shut up, pay attention and work your a$$ off because I think that’s what they’re looking for right off the bat, it’s just a work ethic. You can’t walk in there with a big ego.
You just got to check your ego at the door and just be willing to listen and just work your a$$ off. It is as much easier said than done because it’s a hard business man and those first few months of training, they’re a nightmare.
JR: That group of males that you were recruited with was quite a herd of bulls to run with and everybody had a healthy ego to the extent that you didn’t want to be the guy that didn’t make the drills today.
Batista: Oh my god yeah, especially if the first guy you had calling you was Lesnar. “Hey superstar, where are you?”
It was weird man because we were all close, but we were all at the same time very competitive. And me being kind of acquired natured person, I just had to let my physicality speak for me.
I’m not that guy, I don’t have an aggressive personality. I’m pretty much a passive person, but physically I’m just competitive. If you put me in there and ask me to run the ropes and I’ll just run, hit them as hard as I can till I fall down. That’s the only thing I know, it’s just to work hard.
