Batista was supposed to be a part of WrestleMania 32.
The WrestleMania trilogy is coming up on its 36th anniversary next April. Over the past several months, stories have arisen about WrestleMania 32 which was held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas in 2016. One of those stories had to do with Triple H being set to take on Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson at the event and that planned match having an affect on the outcome of Triple H and Sting's match at WrestleMania 31. Recently, Batista joined Chris Jericho's 'Talk Is Jericho' podcast and spoke about him asking for his final match to be against Triple H years before it took place at WrestleMania 35.
Batista recalled being asked to be at WrestleMania 32 and being a part of the segment with WWE Hall Of Famers Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin but more-so wanted to be a part of or launch the feud between himself and Triple H. In place of Batista, Mick Foley was slotted in and the segment went on as planned.
“But then there was a time before that when they were gonna do something at another pay-per-view where they had Stone Cold, Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley come out and they may have done something with The New Day or something. I can’t remember what it was, but originally I was supposed to play the part of Mick." Batista revealed. "It was supposed to be me and not Mick, and I said, ‘I don’t think so man. That doesn’t sound like what I want’ and Hunter was there and I said, ‘When are we gonna start talking about me and Hunter at Mania?’ And again, Vince was like, ‘Yeah, we’re thinking about it, we talk about it.’ They just never showed any interest in it."
Batista was brought back to WWE for SmackDown 1000 in his hometown of Washington D.C.. Batista's busy travel day on the day of SmackDown 1000 was documented by WWE and he recounted that October 16th day.
“So the SmackDown 1000 was where it actually started, and originally, I wasn’t invited back to the SmackDown 1000 and somebody asked me about it on Twitter and I said, ‘Yeah, I wasn’t invited, shocker’ and so a couple weeks before but anyway, the next day after I tweeted that, I get a call from guess who? And he invited me and I said, ‘Yeah, I’d love to be there but now I’m on this film’ and I said, ‘If I can be there I will.’ So I actually flew myself into D.C. just for the day.” Batista said.
Batista and Triple H had their match at WrestleMania 35 and to hear some thoughts and opinions about the bout, check out Fightful's post-WrestleMania 35 review podcast.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Talk Is Jericho podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
