In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet as part of the INSIGHT With Chris Van Vliet podcast, former WWE star turned actor Dave Bautista discussed several topics, including John Cena’s retirement tour and why Batista himself could not do something similar.

“I get along with John, I respect John a lot, a lot more than people think I do for some reason, I think the internet and I think fans have built this rivalry between us, which there really isn’t, but this is how we’re different.

I would never do this retirement tour, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, it would feel disingenuous to me to go around and I just couldn’t. He wants to go around and he wants to personally thank all the fans, but there’s just something in me where I just couldn’t do it, it would feel uncomfortable to me, accolades feel uncomfortable to me, I could never be the type of baby-face who was saying good stuff, because I wanted to get the crowd to cheer for me, I couldn’t be that guy.

I love and respect what he’s doing with his whole tour to say thank you to the fans, but we’re just different that way, I couldn’t do it, I went out the way I wanted, I retired the way I wanted, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

I announced my retirement on Instagram, and I knew I was going to do it, I just didn’t want to tell anybody I was going to do it, because I didn’t want anybody to say no, no, you’ve got to come in, you’ve got to give a speech, you know the fans, I don’t know, just something about it would have felt false to me, I couldn’t do it.”

The full interview is available at this link.