Below are some top news stories of the day, involving Batista and The Undertaker.
• During an appearance on the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Batista shared a story about his failed tryout at the WCW Power Plant before eventually succeeding in WWE.
Batista explained, “I wanted to just lift weights, and I thought I wanted to bodybuild. And 13 years later, I had nothing to show for it. I was just big and jacked, and I was broke, and I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ And yeah, professional wrestling… And I actually failed at that. No, no, my first tryout was miserable. They told me to leave, and I’d never be a pro wrestler.”
When Fallon asked where this happened, Bautista replied, “That was in Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia, yeah. It’s a place called the Power Plant, which was WCW at the time. They literally told me to leave. They said, ‘You’re not gonna make it.’”
Batista went on to become a 6-time World Champion in WWE and main evented two WrestleManias (21 in 2005 and 30 in 2014).
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• The Undertaker has earned legendary status by constantly reinventing himself. One of his most notable transformations was into The American Badass persona in the early 2000s, which reinvigorated his career.
During an episode of his Six Feet Under podcast, The Undertaker revealed that he was particularly nervous about pitching this new character to Vince McMahon in 2000. Although confident in the idea itself, he was worried about McMahon’s reaction. Undertaker expected McMahon to dismiss the idea outright.
However, McMahon’s reaction was surprisingly positive. Here’s what Taker said:
“That was probably what I was most nervous about. Not the night that I’d debut it but actually telling Vince, ‘What do you think about this?’ I was totally expecting him to go, ‘There’s no damn way, you’ll be fine, screw all those guys talking and cutting those great promos.’
I have a meeting with him, and it’s like, ‘Boss, this is what I’m thinking.’ And I explained my reasoning for it, and it was like, ‘God damn that’s good, that’s great.’ I’m thinking it’s a rib, like here comes the punchline, he’s about to pull the rug right out from underneath me.”
The American Badass gimmick, which lasted from 2000 to 2003 with brief revivals in 2020, 2023 & 2024, successfully added a new dimension to The Undertaker’s storied career.
