10 Disturbing Backstories Behind WWE Gimmicks

4. Deacon Batista

Batista, former World Heavyweight Champion (four times), WWE Champion (twice) and WrestleMania headliner (twice), first debuted on the main roster in the truly lame gimmick of being D-Von Dudley’s lackey.

Following The Dudley Boyz split, D-Von was repackaged as the villainous preacher ‘Reverend D-Von’ and he introduced WWE to his protégé Deacon Batista. Batista’s said about the gimmick, not mincing his words:

"Only in WWE. When I first came up, I did this character called Deacon Batista, so it was the same last name, but I was working with this guy named D-Von Dudley and he was doing this televangelist preacher type deal where he was collecting money and I held this big, goofy box and I was a security guard of his money box. So ridiculous. It was horrible."

On a Talk Is Jericho podcast appearance, Batista revealed some of the early ideas for this character that thankfully were dropped, saying how at one time WWE’s initial plans were to reveal the reason the Batista character was so angry all the time was because he was “a rape child” - a monster who destroyed everything in his path because his mother was once raped and he had no knowledge of who his father was.