Dave Bautista Devoted an Entire Chapter of His 2008 Book to Grievances With Bubba Ray Dudley

Dave Bautista didn’t just air his frustrations with Bubba Ray Dudley in passing — he gave them their own chapter. In his 2008 autobiography Batista Unleashed, the future Hollywood star and former WWE Champion laid out his history inside the squared circle up to that point, and when the subject turned to Dudley, Bautista reportedly had plenty to say.

According to the book, Bautista recounted an incident tied to a 2003 WWE television episode, detailing what he perceived as genuinely poor behavior from Dudley. The decision to dedicate an entire chapter to the subject speaks to how deeply the experience affected him at the time — this wasn’t a throwaway gripe buried in the acknowledgments, but a substantive account that Bautista clearly felt his readers needed to understand.

Bubba Ray Dudley — now better known as Bully Ray on the independent scene and in his role as a trainer and on-screen talent in TNA — has long been regarded as one of the most accomplished tag team wrestlers of his generation, with a resume spanning ECW, WWE, and beyond. His reputation backstage, however, has always been a more complicated conversation in wrestling circles.

Bautista, for his part, went on to become one of WWE’s biggest stars of the mid-2000s as a member of Evolution before transitioning into a massively successful acting career. Batista Unleashed remains one of the more candid memoirs to come out of the WWE locker room during that era, and this chapter appears to be among its more pointed passages.