Free Batista Unleashed by Dave Batista

polite.
    The restaurant manager comes over with my iced tea a short while later. “We do know who you are,” she tells me. “But we want to respect your privacy.”
    Fair enough. I appreciate that.
    While I’m waiting for my food, I try to call home to see how my daughter did on a test she was going to take today. I have some other calls I’m supposed to return, too, and even though it’s ridiculously late I take a stab at it. But one by one people start losing their shyness and come over to see me. There’s a little girl who’s crying she’s so excited about getting an autograph, and then a waiter comes to talk about how his little brother would really be amazed to get an autograph.
    Once you’ve been on TV, people want your autograph. Some fans are really cool about it, waiting until I’m done eating or whatever and asking very politely. Others, a few, can get pretty obnoxious. A few think that the price of a ticket or just turning on the TV entitles them to every part of your personal life. And since you’ve given up your personal life, they can have an autograph any time they want it, even if you’re on the phone or eating—or trying to do both at the same time.
    Those are the extremist fans, though. Not everybody’s like that. A lot of people are really pretty polite. And some are so nervous, they don’t even realize they’re being rude.
    Tonight, I end up posing for photos with the whole staff. They’re so jittery they have trouble with the camera, and it’s quite a while before I’m back on the road.
    When you’re tired and hungry, the attention can be a bit of a strain. But the truth is, I am grateful for my career and I understand what the fans are looking for. They want to connect with the good guy, have a hero in their lives who struggles against all the bad shit that happens to them in this world—a crappy day at the office, tough times at home. It’s all stuff I went through, and still do.
    Outside, the snow has stopped. I gas up the car at an all-night gas station nearby and get back on the road…

Three
DUES
    In 1999, I turned thirty years old.
    In a lot of professions, that’s nothing. If you’re a CPA, a lawyer, a teacher, a businessman, you’re really just getting started at thirty. You can look forward to another thirty-five or forty, maybe even fifty years in your career.
    But in wrestling, thirty is damn old. And it’s one thing if you’re thirty and you’re in the prime of your career. If you’re thirty and you haven’t hit the big time, it’s pretty ridiculous to think that you’re going to go anywhere. A lot of wrestlers have to hang up their gear by the time they reach their midthirties. Their bodies just won’t do what needs to be done.
    A guy like Ric Flair is an obvious exception—he just keeps going and going—but even Ric was a champion at age thirty.
    Me?
    I wasn’t even in the ring yet.
    CRUSHED
    I really had my heart set on wrestling. Despite my fiasco at the Power Plant and Sarge’s bullshit pronouncement that I didn’t have what it takes to be a wrestler, I wanted it in the worst way.
    Most bodybuilders think to themselves that they can become a pro wrestler, but most who try to do it find out it’s a lot harder than they think. Instead of trying to change their way of life to make it, they give up.
    I didn’t do that. I pursued it with everything I had. It was really out of passion and desperation.
    I say desperation because I really was desperate. I didn’t know, I didn’t want, to do anything else. It was all or nothing.
    It had taken me forever to figure out what I wanted in life. I’d drifted into bouncing and working in gyms, not really with much of a plan. It was good work and I liked it. I even got paid pretty well at times. But when I started taking an interest in wrestling, it was different. There was a real passion there.
    I’m not going to compare it to love. Love is a different thing, something between people. You know that and I know