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What’s the story?
On a recent edition of E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness, Former WWE head writer Brian Gewirtz opened up on a controversial angle involving Batista, which was immediately scrapped by WWE.
On that note, Gewirtz asserted that although the idea had Vince McMahon’s consent, the whole angle was discarded after a segment involving Ric Flair and Batista fell flat.
In case you didn’t know…
Batista aka Dave Bautista was one of the two top stars in professional wrestling, during the WWE’s Ruthless Aggression era; the other being John Cena.
Batista is presently one of Hollywood’s top action stars and has expressed his desire to make an in-ring comeback for a feud against Triple H.
The heart of the matter
Brian Gewirtz noted that Vince McMahon had urged the writers to come up with layered back-stories to the WWE characters, which in turn led to the sad ‘Ballad of Little Dave Bautista’ angle, during the Animal’s days with Evolution. Gewirtz continued—
“’We need nuanced, layered backstories.' I'm like, 'okay.' (*Gewirtz said; imitating McMahon) 'So, with that in mind…' We're like, 'oh boy, here it comes.'.”
“'What if Dave Bautista was a foster child?' (*mimicking McMahon*)…I'm like, 'what?' He's like, 'no, it's why he has a chip on his shoulder and that's why Ric [Flair], because he's in Evolution at the time, Ric is kind of his father figure,' so all that kind of makes sense. Okay, he's a foster child.”
Furthermore, Gewirtz explained that although the angle was briefly played out by Ric Flair and Batista on television, the idea was immediately canned, due to the fact that the fan reaction to its execution wasn’t quite desirable.
What’s next?
Batista is presently busy with his Hollywood obligations, while his storyline father figure can be seen right HERE.
Meanwhile, Brian Gewirtz serves as the Senior Vice President of Development for Seven Bucks Productions.
Author’s take
Thankfully the WWE chose to refrain from going forward with the sad little Batista storyline.
The Animal is a bona fide badass character and was great the way he’d been portrayed.
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