Ex-Champion Makes Big Admission About WWE Run: “We Struggled,” “It Was Tough”
A legendary WWE Hall of Famer spoke about how difficult it was living on the road during his time in the company.
Dave Bautista has had a very successful career as an actor over the last decade and a half after being known as Batista in WWE. During his time in WWE, he became a World Champion within three years and would go on to have an incredible career that saw him win 6 WWE World Titles.
While Batista has yet to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, it was supposed to happen in the past, but it didn’t due to the COVID-19 pandemic changing things.
In an interview with WOLF Gyms earlier this week, Batista spoke about some of the hardships that he went through as a WWE superstar.
“They pretty much provided you with airfare and that was it. Not food, not cars, not hotels. None of that. So my first few years of wrestling, I was broke until 2005 when I became World Champion and started to make some money.
I was still borrowing money from people, I was living in a tiny apartment when I was World Champion because I had just become World Champion. I hadn’t started making money yet. I used to go to those check-cashing places and get like a $300 loan… week after week.
Around 2005 is when I didn’t have to do that anymore and I started to make money, but until then, I was grinding.”
JBL Gives His Perspective About Life As A WWE Superstar
John Bradshaw Layfield is a WWE Hall of Famer who had a longer run on the main roster than Batista. JBL started as Justin Hawk Bradshaw, then Bradshaw, and finally the JBL character emerged. As a wrestler, he was active on the roster for about 15 years.
Even in retirement as a wrestler, JBL is still involved with the company as an announcer on the AAA brand, while also making appearances on WWE programming as well.
On the Something to Wrestle podcast, JBL spoke about his experience in WWE.
“I agree with them. Look, it was tough back then. Dave’s 100 percent right in what he wrote.
I remember the first year I was with WWE. I think I made 76 or $77,000. I worked every single live event and every pay-per-view, and that’s what I made. I mean, it was 250, 300 nights a year on the road, and we were in a hotel every single night.
They didn’t pay for cars, didn’t pay for hotels, except for like big pay-per-views and things like that. Occasionally they had paid for your hotel at some big pay-per-views, but for the most part they didn’t. They just got you there.”
As he continued, JBL spoke about the process of renting a car with other wrestlers and also sharing hotel rooms with others.
“Then you got your own rented car. We had four people to a car. Me and Dutch and Tom Prichard and Glenn Jacobs (Kane), Al Snow, those are the guys that would kind of rotate. We’d have four people in a car, in a full-size car. We’re not talking about a Cadillac. And we’d have three or four people to a hotel room at that time.
We were on TV. People thought we were these huge stars, and I guess a lot of us were, or some of us were, but we’re sitting there four people to a Red Roof room. We’d split the bed, the box springs and the top, and make four beds out of it.”
When it comes to travel, JBL spoke about flying on planes a lot throughout his life.
“I’ve got I think right now something like 6.4 million miles on American Airlines. I got a million miler with Delta. You just got where you’re sick of getting on planes. You’ve been to Detroit 50 times. Nothing against Detroit, nothing against Cleveland or Dallas or L.A. or anywhere else, but eventually it loses the appeal.”
Lastly, JBL made the point that they definitely struggled as WWE superstars.
“We knew what we were doing as far as where we wanted to be, but yeah, we struggled. It wasn’t glamorous. It was tough. It was work. It was really hard work.”
Like Batista, JBL became a main event level performer and things were more glamorous as the years went on, but it wasn’t always like that.
Also Read: 6-Time WWE World Champion Confirms He Will Never Wrestle Again