Batista confirms he will not return to wrestling again

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LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 22: Dave Bautista attends "The Wrecking Crew" UK Special Screening at Cineworld Leicester Square on January 22, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage) As a long-time Dave “Batista” Bautista fan, I’ve been waiting for his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame since it was announced back in December of 2019. I’ve never spent much time thinking he’d come back to a WWE or pro wrestling ring, though. Even before he established himself as our greatest wrestler-turned-actor, Bautista seemed too determined to succeed in his new profession — and maybe a little too proud —to ever go back to his old one after retiring following his loss to Triple H at WrestleMania 35. In a podcast promoting his involvement with W.O.L.F. Gyms, Bautista confirms it’s not worth waiting for a wrestling comeback. He first talked about his 2010 exit* from after a WWE title program with John Cena: “I left the company on good terms; I left at the height of my career. It was hard as fuck to walk away, cause I walked away, and I went broke. It was nice having that check come in every week, but I walked away because the company was heading in a direction that just wasn’t right for me. It worked out; I was lucky it worked out. “I walked away as champ, I walked away on top. It’s hard to walk away. Most people don’t walk away. And this is why it’s such a running joke when wrestlers retire, because they never retire. They retire like five times. When explaining why he won’t be on of those wrestlers, he switched to talking about his post-WrestleMania 35 retirement*: “There’s people, they always thought throughout these years that I would come back, I would come out of retirement, and I told them over and over I won’t. I had a fucking storybook ending and I won’t shit on it. I’ll go do manual labor before I tarnish that. If I go broke again, I know what it’s like to be poor. I don’t like being poor, but I know what it’s like, and I will go fucking broke and be poor before I ever go back to wrestling. “I will never wrestle again. I went out the way I wanted, the guy I wanted to go out with. It’s never going to be that good again and I just won’t tarnish it.” We’ll still get a Hall of Fame speech at some point though… right Dave? * Neither of which is as cool as his 2014 post-WrestleMania 30 exit.