Batista Shares a Cold Truth About WWE’s Current Product

At some point in their life, every WWE fan will come to the same universal conclusion: it’s not as good as it used to be. And at 49-years old, Dave Batista just joined our disenchanted culture.

The 6-time WWE Champion and Hollywood regular joined Edge and Christian on their podcast and kept it real about the current state of WWE.

“This is not a dig on anyone, but I just don’t feel that the product is as good as it used to be. I think it [has] just changed in a lot of ways and not for the better,” he said.

In making the requisite comparison to the past, Batista reasoned that today’s wrestlers may be a little too generic.

“When I came up with [Edge and Christian], I mean, everybody was rockstars, man! They were real, live rockstars! They were real performers and everybody had kind of an edge to them.” Batista continued, “they were interesting and different individuals and I feel like a lot of that [has] just been lost. I feel like a lot of the edginess has been taken out of wrestling, the creativity.”

Batista thinks that NXT may be at the root of this bland era of wrestling. However, to him, it’s not that the NXT guys and gals are inherently boring, but may be afraid of taking creative risks due to a high quotient of replaceability.

“I think a lot of the guys, their hands are tied and I think a lot of the guys now, they’re terrified that they’ll lose their job. If they do something wrong, they’re going to lose their job. They’re much more easily replaceable now because they have a factory for them! NXT, it’s a wrestler factory…They’re cookie cutter and they’re not individuals. They’re not thinking outside of the box,” he said.

It looks like Batista may take the opportunity to teach the young bucks of WWE about how to create a lasting character as he’s rumored to be coming back to WWE or at least said as much On a recent episode of WWE Hall of Famer’s Jim Ross‘ podcast. According to the Animal, he not only wants to step in the ring, but he’d like to do it as a full-time WWE Superstar. Even more, Batista says that Vince McMahon is well aware of this. Batista was so earnest in his intentions that he says he wants to even work house shows – something other part-timers categorically avoid.

The 6-time WWE Champion also underlined that he wishes to come back for a program with his old running mate, Triple H. Batista qualified all of this by asserting he and WWE’s schedule would have to line up to make this magic happen.