Dave Bautista Looks Unrecognizable in Throwback Photo

Dave Bautista is pretty easy to spot in a crowded room. The wrestler-turned-actor stands 6’4″ for a start, covered in tattoos, and has been rocking a variation of the same shaved or cropped hairstyle for years now.

But it wasn’t always that way.

In a recent throwback photo posted to Instagram, Bautista took fans back to the good old days—late ’80s, early ’90s by the looks of it—and revealed that he used to have a long dark mane.

The Guardians of the Galaxy and Dune star’s followers were agog at how drastically different he looked, with professional wrestlers Paul Wight and Dolph Ziggler praising his “luxurious” and “luscious” hair, while film director Pete Segal exlaimed: “Holy shit! It’s Fabio.” Meanwhile, bodybuilder Flex Lewis liked the long-haired look so much he said Bautista should “bring it back.”

The photo was taken during Bautista’s bodybuilding days—just in case those bulging biceps didn’t give it away—and his workout tank is emblazoned with the logo of training mecca Gold’s Gym. Bautista has spoken before about how getting into bodybuilding as a young man changed his life, saying that going to the gym “became therapeutic” and helped him to channel his “anger and aggression” in a healthy way.

“I loved training so much that I turned it into professional wrestling,” he said in 2022. “I started to take my body I had from bodybuilding and my athletic ability from wrestling, and turned that into a career, which led into film… That’s where it all started for me.”

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