WrestleMania: Batista Has Been The Best Heel In WWE

This WrestleMania season, Batista has stood out from the rest by delivering some of the best heel performances in recent memory.

In WWE these days, you get used to a certain type of heel behavior, even around WrestleMania season.

Insult the fans, throw in a sneak attack on the face, and maybe take a stab or two at what fans would consider a taboo topic. It’s a fairly solid playbook for WWE to follow, even if its one that can become a tad dry at times.

This year, however, the Road to WrestleMania has given us a heel with so much more range than what WWE typically provides. This WrestleMania season has given us the exceptionally crafted return of Batista.

Batista’s return has been one of the most captivating components of WWE TV over the past months. His promos, although few in number, have stood out above the rest, making his impending match with Triple H feel like a must-see affair.

Batista has been able to capture an essence in his character that befits that of a well-developed cinematic villain, something which likely shouldn’t come as a surprise given the tremendous job the former WWE Champion has done in Hollywood.

His actions are reprehensible, his personality swings erratically from a calm and collected star to an unhinged lunatic, yet all the while the motivations that drive him remain almost startlingly understandable.

Batista just wants to leave WWE on what he feels are his terms. His whole career he’s felt used and manipulated by someone he considered a close friend. Someone who’s now willing to practically spit in his face by cruelly explaining how little he truly cared.

Of course, this story wouldn’t be complete without Batista’s intense, psychotic desire to end his former friend Triple H’s career while threatening to destroy everything ‘The Game’ held near and dear, if need be, in order to achieve the goal he so desperately desires.

It really is that artfully crafted dichotomy between nearly relatable motivations and truly incomprehensible actions that have made this story into one of the best WWE has told heading into WrestleMania.

Batista has hit every mark he’s needed to hit along the way too. He’s delivered one of the most memorable exchanges in recent history with Triple H to kick-off the feud. An exchange which still encapsulates everything there is to love about this angle as a viewer:

Subsequently, he has backed that mic performance up with a great interview with Michael Cole, along with a promo consisting of just 4 words that somehow was still the highlight of an entire episode of Raw.

Triple H, for his part, has also helped drive home this storyline through brilliant explanations of not only his own past motivations, but also of Batista’s current actions when ‘The Animal’ hasn’t been present on WWE TV.

Nonetheless, it’s been Batista who’s really set the tone for this rivalry by simply being one of the best heels we’ve seen in WWE in recent memory.