10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Batista
3. He Dated Several WWE Divas And Had Issues With Others
Batista loves the ladies. There's nothing wrong with that. There are many stories of wrestlers dating women in wrestling and he's one of them. Since WWE employs so many women and had even more of them in the mid 2000s when he was at his peak, it makes sense that he would get involved with them. Why not? They're beautiful women. It just seems like he got around a lot and was criticized more than most because of the way things happened. Here's a rundown of just some of the Batista stories over the years.
- He had a much publicized relationship with Melina that he wrote about in his book. The reason this got a lot of attention was because she was dating fellow WWE wrestler John Morrison for a long time. She's still with Morrison. There are stories that Morrison didn't even know it was going on and that even when he did know he did nothing about it. Guys like Bob Holly have ripped on Morrison for not standing up for himself. It's also believed that Vince McMahon didn't want to push Morrison because he didn't take a stand while all of that was happening.
- He admitted to dating Kelly Kelly. She's been mentioned as somebody that has been with a lot of male wrestlers during her WWE days, so perhaps that was meant to be even though they are nearly 20 years apart in age. He also said that he dated Rosa Mendes too.
- There are also stories of him having issues with former WWE diva Shelly Martinez, who was known as Ariel. Apparently, Batista played a role in getting her fired. Martinez spoke about the incident in 2013: "Batista and I had an aggressive conversation backstage and he said something that were unnecessary and uncalled for. If it was outside of wrestling, Im pretty sure it could have been a legal problem for both Batista and WWE. But this is wrestling, and its a mans business, so I fired back and they fired me. I was just a vampire girl in the fake ECW; he was Batista, and they wanted to accommodate him."
- There were also rumors of Batista having run-ins with former diva Mickie James although it wasn't due to the two of them dating. She was released in 2010 just one month before he left the company.
Lastly, he received a lot of criticism for cheating on his then wife Angie, who had cancer. Cheating on loved ones in wrestling does happen, but he really got a bad rap because she had cancer. To his credit, he did own up to it and made this video in 2010 (after he left WWE) with her as a way to raise awareness for cancer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHAiy_mtIwU
That video is one of the best things he's done in his career and he should be very proud of it.