Former WWE World Champion Batista Shares His Favorite ‘WrestleMania’ Match, Thoughts On Triple H
For every professional wrestler in the WWE, WrestleMania is the pinnacle event that competitors look forward to the most. At the event, careers are made, as well as ended. Most recently, at WrestleMania 33 at the Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida, the Undertaker made every indication that it will be his last one after 25 appearances. After his loss against Roman Reigns, Undertaker ceremonially placed his gloves, coat, and hat in the middle of the ring, walked over to his wife, Michelle McCool, to kiss her, then proceeded to walk to the ramp and descend down with his fist held up.
One of his WrestleMania matches was against Batista in 2007 at WrestleMania 23 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. Despite the hard-hitting match, Undertaker was able to prevail against Batista. Interestingly, there were reports that Batista was considered to defeat Undertaker and end the streak at one point before the match occurred. However, this did not happen until seven years later, when the Streak was ended by current WWE Universal Champion Brock Lesnar.
Batista has been very vocal of his disappointment of the WrestleMania streak ending, making his thoughts known to Huffington Post UK.
“It sucked! Honestly, I thought it sucked. I haven’t really talked much about it but I think it was a bad decision, a horrible decision. I don’t have any say in the matter but to me, watching as a fan, it made me sick. Brock Lesnar beating him didn’t seem to work and it really wasn’t good that Brock left the day after. I just don’t see how that made sense at all. I don’t think anyone wanted to see the streak broken and it just didn’t make sense to me.”
Batista shared on the most recent Talk is Jericho podcast that his match with Undertaker was his favorite WrestleMania match of all time. However, he greatly put over Triple H for helping him along the way.
“[Undertaker] still had the streak then, but it was just, I felt like it was really when I’d come into my own. I don’t feel like anybody carried me through that match. You know when my first main event with [Triple H], Hunter totally carried me through the match. I wasn’t ready to carry a WrestleMania match. I have to give all the credit to Hunter. The way he built the story, the way he built the match, putting me over and putting the title on me. It was all him. You know, as soon as we had stumbled on to there was some money to be made there, and people saw that me and Hunter might turn on each other, or that I might turn on Hunter, people lost their mind.”
Batista added that Vince McMahon wanted to book a match the following week after Batista turned on Triple H, but Triple H rejected the idea, stating that he and Batista were going to “milk it out” and build the storyline for a WrestleMania payoff. He stated that Triple H really fought for that to happen because he really believed in the angle. In addition, he stated that he does not remember the match against Triple H.
He added that he did not sleep much for a couple of nights before the match, and could barely feel his left leg due to having so many back issues. He also mentioned that he was so much opposed to painkillers, but had to depend on them during the tour after WrestleMania because he was in so much pain. Thankfully, he managed to have a significantly successful career outside of wrestling, starring in a number of box office movies over the years including his new movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
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