Batista had a great career in the WWE before he moved on to Hollywood and became a huge star in the Marvel franchise Guardians of the Galaxy . In a recent appearance on the Chris Jericho podcast Talk Is Jericho , Batista looked back on his time in the WWE and pointed to one man he faced that he called the best big man in WWE history: The Undertaker.
The Undertaker just retired after losing to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 33 , but before that happened, he had an amazing record of 23-1 at the biggest WWE event of the year. One of those wins came against Batista at WrestleMania 23 in a match for the WWE world championship.
Batista has always been a hardcore professional wrestling fan, although he has a disdain for much of the product right now. Batista mentioned that when The Undertaker is in a match, it should always be the main event of the show, and he remains disappointed that their match at WrestleMania 23 was not in the main event spot on the show.
Of course, John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels was a very deserving main event on the show, but the interesting thing is that the WWE world championship match between Batista and The Undertaker was in the middle of the card.
The Batista vs. Undertaker match was the fifth one at WrestleMania 23 and was followed by an ECW vs. New Breed match, the Donald Trump and Vince McMahon Battle of the Billionaires match, and the women’s title match.
“We both thought that we were the main event as well. For some reason, they decided not to go with us and I thought our storyline was awesome… There [were] a few kind of monumental landmarks with Taker never holding that title before… I was dropping the title to him and I thought it should have been the main event. I really thought we stole the show.”
The feud between Batista and The Undertaker was part of the SmackDown brand, and The Undertaker had won the Royal Rumble match that year to qualify for the WWE world title shot. At that time, the winner got to choose which title he would contend for, and The Undertaker attacked Batista to set up their match.
Batista and The Undertaker fought in a series of tag team matches leading up to WrestleMania 23 . The feud started with Batista talking about respecting The Undertaker, but then he said he lost respect for The Dead Man as the attacks continued. Finally, the two fought at WrestleMania 23 , and The Undertaker won his first WWE world title.
Batista was right when he said the match was a landmark in the career of The Undertaker. The win meant that The Undertaker became the first man at that time to ever win both the WWE World Heavyweight Championship and the WWE Championship at WrestleMania .
Batista also said in the interview that he loved working with The Undertaker because he is fun and easy to work with. Batista also said that The Undertaker is “super athletic” considering how big he is and said that he is also “super relaxed” because he has seen and done everything and knows what is going on. Batista said that when someone fights The Undertaker, they just have to do what he says and it will be great.
As much as Batista loves the WWE, it sounds like he is finished with the WWE and will follow The Undertaker into a permanent retirement from professional wrestling. Batista said that he pitched the WWE an idea to come back and work a program with Triple H that would end with Batista retiring officially from professional wrestling, but the WWE didn’t seem interested in the idea.
[Featured Image by WWE]
