Early Life
Batista was born to David Michael Bautista, the son of Filipino immigrants to America, and Donna Raye Bautista, who is Greek. His parents separated (and eventually divorced). His paternal grandfather served in the military, worked as a taxicab driver, barber, and other jobs to feed the family. Batista says he is not ashamed to admit he lived in poverty.
He has publicly admitted to having a hard life where, as before he was age nine, three murders occurred on his shared front lawn. As young as age 13, he was stealing automobiles. By age 17, he was considered estranged from his parents and on his own, despite admitting later that "I am proud of my parents. They are good, honest, hard-working folks. They taught me the values of working hard." Batista became a regular bouncer for clubs until he was arrested after a fight that left two patrons injured, one of which was rendered unconscious. After a trial, he was sentenced to one year of probation. He was also a lifeguard before he pursued a career in bodybuilding. He credits bodybuilding as possibly saving his life.
Read more about this topic: Dave Batista
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)