For the first in forever, the WWE is facing stiff competition from an upstart wrestling promotion with oodles of funding. The AEW debuted a few months ago with a couple of notable WWE defectors on their roster in Chris Jericho and Dean Ambrose, the latter citing "emotional exhaustion" as the cause for his change of employment. Unfortunately, neither the WWE or the AEW, or any global wrestling enterprise for that matter, will ever play host to Dave Bautista. The wrestler turned actor declared himself "irrevocably retired" from sports entertainment during a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet.
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"This is a real wrestling retirement," Bautista told Van Vliet."I am done. My in-ring career is over. I would love to go back on the show because I love the company, I believe in the product, so I will go back on the show, and if they ask me to go in the Hall of Fame, I will. ... But I will not have another wrestling match. I will go broke before I have another wrestling match, and I will not go and wrestle for another promotion. It's not going to happen."
"I will not go and wrestle for another promotion," Bautista continued. "It's not going to happen." In his last outing with the WWE, Bautista lost a decision to his former mentor Triple H during Wrestlemania 35. As the story would suggest, a Bautista loss was supposed to insinuate that his Leviathan character was being written out storybook once and for all. By all accounts, Bautista is better off focusing on his prosperous acting career anyway.