With a white beard and without the muscles of his heyday, Dave Bautista showed up like this on the red carpet for the premiere of his latest movie. Nothing particularly unusual, but the former wrestling champion appeared drastically different compared to his last match in the ring, to the point that journalists and fans present at the event described him as “unrecognizable.”
Like many of his colleagues, the WWE legend decided to leave wrestling to focus on acting, a path that led him to lose a significant amount of muscle mass, a transformation he himself described as “a real nightmare.”
The Change
The last time Dave Bautista (his actual name), 55 years old, stepped into the ring was in 2019. In the following years, he decided to dedicate himself exclusively to filming movies, such as The Killer’s Game and The Last Showgirl. But to portray the roles, he had to lose a lot of weight, so much so that many people, upon seeing the radical change, thought the former champion was battling an illness. He himself has denied these rumors and explained the reason for his weight loss in an interview with Chris Van Vilet: “Losing all that weight was quite a task; a year ago, I weighed 143 kilograms, now I weigh about 109.
The lowest weight I’ve had since I was 19. At first, it was a nightmare.”
To lose over 30 kilos in 18 months, he followed a strict diet and a routine based on Jiu Jitsu. A choice that now makes him feel better and more comfortable on set. “I couldn’t do some scenes, so I had to lose the excess weight – he explained in another interview with Live with Kelly and Mark – muscles weigh more than fat, and I’ve lost a lot of them. But now I feel much better and more at ease.”