Batista And Triple H Originally Wanted A Hell In A Cell For Their Match At WrestleMania 35

Triple H and Batista wanted to clash inside Hell In A Cell.

“The Animal” Batista made a surprise return to WWE programming this past February to begin the road to WrestleMania and what would be his final pro wrestling match against Triple H. Batista and Triple H exchanged a series of promos and social media posts ahead of their bout at WrestleMania 35. Following the event, Batista took to Instagram and announced that he is officially done with the in-ring portion of wrestling.

The former 6-time WWE World Champion joined Chris Jericho’s ‘Talk Is Jericho’ podcast recently and recapped his final run in the sports-entertainment company. Batista shared that he and Triple H originally lobbied to have a Hell In A Cell match at WrestleMania 35 and added that the special part of Hell In A Cell is when the match takes places at an event other than the pay-per-view named after it.

“We knew we’d have to have a few bells and whistles. Originally, we wanted to have a Hell In A Cell, and Vince, because of the pay-per-view, didn’t want a Hell In A Cell. We really wanted a Hell In A Cell. I think that’s what makes it great. You have a Hell In A Cell that’s not at the Hell In A Cell.” Batista laughed. “They are just great matches, they are violent and we needed bells and whistles. We’re two older guys, we haven’t wrestled in a long time and we needed the drama and we’ve already got the history, so we just needed the violence, and so anyway, we put together the match. We hadn’t touched — we planned to meet up at NXT to train and we ended up just talking. I actually took one of the guys who was up there — one of the trainees, bumped him around a little bit and got a little ring time in. But Hunter and I never touched and I planned to go up to New York like the following week or a couple weeks later because his schedule was crazy. That dude is all over the place, and then I called him. I say, ‘You still want me to come up?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, I was thinking about it. You’re gonna come up’ and he said, ‘Here’s the thing: I’m gonna get in the ring and we’re gonna roll around, we’re gonna wrestle and I’m gonna feel good, I’m gonna feel more confident going into Mania. So the other side to that is, I’m gonna roll around, I’m gonna re-tear my pec and we’re gonna be screwed.’ He said, ‘So why don’t we play it safe. We know each other. We’ve been in the ring enough. We’ll plan it out, we’ll talk about it, we’ll go to Mania, we’ll do it there and that’s what we did.”

Following WrestleMania 34 in 2018, Batista confirmed that he was in talks with WWE about teaming with Ronda Rousey in her debut match against Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. For the full story on that, click here.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit the Talk Is Jericho podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.