Former WWE star Dave Bautista made his MMA debut last night and looked very much like a 43-year-old man who had never competed in combat sports before.
Bautista ended up beating pot-bellied Vince Lucero by TKO at 4:05 of the first round Saturday night in the main event of CES MMA’s show in Providence, but not before getting rocked early on by the veteran of more than 40 pro fights. Once he weathered the initial storm, Bautista took Lucero down, got his back and rained down punches to his head until referee Dan Miragliotta put a stop to the action.
Batista said afterward to interviewer and UFC fighter Joe Lauzon that he definitely wants to fight again. He said the early trouble was due to being very nervous and the fact that Lucero, who moves to a robust 22-23 record, hits like a “[expletive] horse.”
“I’m better than I showed,” Bautista said.
The former Wrestlemania headliner is going to have to be a lot better against someone more credible than Lucero, but he won’t have to worry about that for awhile with CES MMA. It’s likely they’ll continue to feed him tomato cans that he can easily stomp. One of them might test his chin again, though, if he keeps dropping his hands like he did Saturday.
To his credit, Bautista, who was known as Batista in WWE, actually started his own gym in the Tampa area and has been training for a few years in MMA. One of his training partners has been Stephan Bonnar, who meets Anderson Silva next week at UFC 153. For that, he is already better than some of the freak show attractions the sport has seen in recent years.