Batista Unleashed

DEAD MEN
Every story has a beginning. Mine is in Washington, D.C., in 1969.
Washington, D.C., in the sixties, seventies, and eighties was one of the poorest places in the country. Murder was common. Crack cocaine was just getting its start. Life expectancy for kids was worse than in many third world countries. The politicians were corrupt, homelessness was at its peak, and even lawabiding people viewed the police as the enemy.
But to me, it was home.
I won't say I was unaffected by the poverty and crime around me when I grew up. It's not like I lived on a safe cul-de-sac around the corner from the ghetto, either: three people died at different times in my front yard before I was nine. But to me, D.C. wasn't the life-sucking hellhole it was for a lot of people. And the big reason for that was my mom.
FAMILY
I was born January 18, 1969.
For some strange reason, the date is a big controversy in the wrestling world. At some point very early in my career, someone wrote a story somewhere saying that I had been born in 1966. That year seems to have stuck with a lot of people for some reason. There have been other dates published, too. There have been so many, in fact, that when I give the right date, some people think I'm lying about my age.
I swear to God, it's like it's a big deal.
Just last week some guy told my girlfriend I was lying about my age, that I wasn't really thirty-eight, that I was forty-two. Maybe he was trying to pick her up, I don't know.
I don't lie about my birth date -- I try not to lie about anything, but especially not that. It's no secret that I came to the business really late. I was almost thirty when I got into wrestling. That's real old for a wrestler starting out. I never lied about my age then, so it would be really crazy to lie now. And if I was going to lie about my age, I wouldn't say I was thirty-eight. I'd knock at least five more years off.
I have a sister, who was born about a year later than I was. Our parents weren't very original when it came to naming us. I was named after my father, David Michael Bautista. I'm Dave Junior.My sister was named after my mother, Donna Raye Bautista. She's a junior, too. It made it easier for people to remember our names.
(I spell my name Batista for wrestling, but on my birth certificate it has a u after the first a.)
My father was born in Washington,D.C., but his family was from the Philippines, and as a wrestler I've always felt a strong bond with the fans in the Philippines because of that family connection. His father, my granddad, was in the army; he didn't talk much about what he did, but I know he was in World War II and was wounded or hurt in some way. The family legends have him down as a hell-raiser when he was young, but I don't know much more than that.
I always heard that he was a real ladies' man, and that he got into some trouble in San Francisco when he was younger. Supposedly he was running numbers for gangsters and did something for which, for some reason or another, they wanted to kill him.Whatever it was that he did, trouble chased him out of town and he came east.
Those bad days were long gone by the time I came along, and he never told me about them, even though I was his favorite and he wasn't afraid to show it. On the contrary: he used to brag about it.
According to the family stories, my grandfather would never really hold any of my cousins or me when we were babies. He wasn't the nurturing type. But then one day my mom had to run to grab something burning or something like that and she just threw me in my grandfather's arms. His face lit up. By the time she came back to get me, he and I had bonded somehow. From that day, I was his favorite grandchild. I still remember him asking how much I loved him and holding my hands out to say, "This much!"
When he died in 1988, it just broke my heart. He's buried in Arlington Cemetery, an honor reserved for men and women who have served our country.
My grandfather had a bunch of jobs in the Washington, D.C., area, but I only knew him as a barber. He had his own shop in Oxen Hill, Maryland, an old-fashioned place with four chairs in it. He had to be one of the most popular guys in the neighborhood. Everybody knew him. You'd go into a McDonald's with him or just walk down the block and everyone would say hello. He was very friendly and very well liked.
He was also a very generous grandfather. When I was around six or seven, we lived real close to the shop, maybe a few blocks away. I'd go into the shop and sit in his chair, just hanging out. He'd give me lollipops all day. My cousin Anthony, who was a little older than me, would stop by, too. Sometimes, my grandfather would give us a few bucks and we'd go to Toys "R" Us. It was right across the street.
It was funny. For a while we had a regular little scam going, me and my cousin. We'd buy the toys and play with them; then, after we got a little tired of them, we'd break them and take them back.