Hollywood star Dave Bautista, otherwise known as Batista throughout his legendary WWE career, has just been promoted to brown belt in BJJ after over a decade of training in the sport. Bautista started out his career as a professional wrestler all the way back in 1999 and he quickly shot to fame in the business, making his WWE debut just a few years later in 2002. Within just a few years of making that move he became one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the world and eventually starting working as an actor alongside that career.
What started out as cameos and small appearances in TV series ended up becoming Bautista’s primary career after he left professional wrestling in 2010. He quickly started to land bigger roles as the years went on and although he returned to the WWE for short stints later on, he focused on acting above all else. Bautista is perhaps best known for playing ‘Drax the Destroyer’ in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and in several other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Around the same time that he left professional wrestling, he picked up BJJ and started training in it before making his professional MMA debut in 2012.
He won that MMA fight by TKO in the first round and although he didn’t continue that career any further than that, he stuck with BJJ and has done ever since. While Bautista is far from the only professional wrestler to spend time training in BJJ, he’s one of only a handful to make it this far in the belt ranks. Dave ‘Batista’ Bautista has had some time off the mats over the years, understandably given the hectic nature of his career, but he has re-dedicated himself to BJJ and has now been promoted to brown belt in the sport by Matheus Andre and Josh Raff under Cesar Gracie.
Dave Bautista announced the news that he had been promoted to BJJ brown belt in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
