Batista may be a charter member of Triple H's new faction. At 6 foot 5 and about 300 pounds, he may be a monster. But he's still a WWE rookie.
"I'm at the veteran's mercy," Batista said. "Rookie mistake. Won't happen again."
He is referring to a bet he lost in early January to D-Von Dudley, which basically makes him D-Von's servant. It all started when Batista ran into Maven before a non-televised event in El Paso, Texas, and asked if they could drive to the building together, and get there early so they could work out.
Maven said he was riding with D-Von, they were planning on arriving early, and Batista was invited to come along.
"But D-Von's kind of on a veteran's schedule," Batista said. "And I'm kind of on a rookie schedule."
Batista's reaction when Maven told him D-Von was planning to arrive early was something like, "D-Von get to the building early? Yeah, right." Then he said something out loud that, in retrospect, he regrets: "If D-Von gets to the building early, I'll run around the building naked."
Recalls D-Von, "I said, 'Are you sure you want to make that bet?' He said, 'Yeah.'"
Batista got to the Don Haskins Center at the University of Texas-El Paso at 5 p.m., two and a half hours before show time. There, he found D-Von, who had arrived 15 minutes prior, waiting for him.
"I actually looked through the curtain and saw him," Batista said. "I was like, 'Damn it!'"
Batista couldn't avoid D-Von all night; when the two ran into each other, it was time for Batista to "pay up." But local law enforcement officials wouldn't let Batista strip naked in public.
They were forced to come up with what Paul Heyman likes to call a "contingency plan." The idea of having Batista run the ropes 20 times, sans clothes, was thrown around, but ultimately rejected so as not to make the other people in the arena uncomfortable. Batista suggested that perhaps he could pay D-Von to settle their bet.
"Of course, D-Von said $50,000," Batista said, so that plan too was scrapped.
Finally, a solution was agreed upon: Batista would have to do 15 pushups. "I'm thinking, 'Sure. No problem. Fifteen pushups,'" Batista said. But it was a little more complicated than that.
Batista would only do one pushup at a time -- and only when D-Von commanded him to. Batista is in the hallway backstage talking to Vince McMahon? D-Von could simply walk by and say, "Give me one!" And Batista would have to get down and do a pushup right then, right there.
To further the humiliation, each time Batista finishes a pushup, but before returning to his feet, Batista must yell a certain sentence loud enough so everyone can hear him. While we can't reveal the exact sentence, it has to do with the fact that Batista is at D-Von's mercy.
It's not the first time such a bet has taken place. A few years ago, SmackDown! ring announcer Tony Chimel beat RAW announcer Jonathan Coachman in a race (Chimel had a head-start, but a bet's a bet.) Since then, Chimel's been able to tell Coach to "Give me one!" It even happened at Coach's birthday party last August in Seattle.
At last count, Batista still had a few more pushups to go. He had already worked off most of them -- backstage at live events, in front of WWE.com cameras at the RAW X show or wherever D-Von saw fit.
"Batista, being the rookie that he is, will learn," D-Von said.
Said Batista, "I'm still surprised he was early."