Dave Bautista Says He’s ‘Killing’ Himself to Maintain 75-Pound Weight Loss

Actor and former WWE star Dave Bautista is opening up about his recent 75-pound weight loss.

“I got really big for a role, and it was uncomfortably big,” Bautista, 55, said during an interview published on Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube channel on Tuesday, September 10. “I was around 315 pounds, and I put the weight on really fast. … I packed it on with French fries and pancakes.

Bautista noted that the film in question was the 2023 psychological horror film Knock at the Cabin, in which he played Leonard, one of four people trying to convince a family to prevent the apocalypse by sacrificing one of their own.

“Looking back at it, I probably overdid it. I was probably a little too big,” the retired wrestler said. “I put on an uncomfortable amount of weight and it took me forever to shed it off.”

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But shed it off, he did, as Bautista shared that he is now around 240 pounds.

“The more I trimmed down, the better I felt,” he said. “And I also noticed the more I trimmed down, the better I looked on camera and the better I looked next to other actors. … Even at this weight … at 6’4” [and] 240 pounds, next to your typical actor I look like a gorilla, and it’s distracting.”

While Bautista said that some people online have expressed concern for his health due to his slimmed-down physique, he assured fans that he’s still a “large human being” and is “not starving or anything.” He is, however, working hard to keep the weight off.

“I’ll probably lose a few more pounds. I’m basically killing myself to be this trim. I mean, I am training hard,” he said. “My calories are pretty restricted.”

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Bautista noted that he does intermittent fasting and tries not to eat within 3 hours of going to bed.

“It’s a short window,” he said.

Bautista retired from professional wrestling in April 2019. That June, he told Van Vliet, 41, that he would “go broke” before he did another wrestling match.

“This is a real wrestling retirement,” he said at the time. “I am done. My in-ring career is over.”

Van Vliet asked Bautista on Tuesday for his thoughts on John Cena’s upcoming retirement tour, which is set to kick off in January.

“This is where we’re different. I would never do [that],” Bautista said of the tour. “It would feel [disingenuous] to me. … I see his point where he wants to go around and he wants to personally thank all the fans. There’s just something in me where I couldn’t do it. It would feel uncomfortable to me. Accolades feel uncomfortable to me.”