Before being a part of Evolution, before headlining multiple WrestleMania shows and before many title reigns, Batista was simply known as Deacon Batista.

Starting out his WWE career nearly two decades ago, Batista served as Reverend D-Von’s deacon. Although it gave Batista a front row seat to learn from an industry veteran, he admitted in the “Ruthless Aggression” documentary on the WWE Network that he hated the Deacon Batista gimmick.

“I hated it. I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. I hated everything about it. I didn’t like the suit. I didn’t like the box. I didn’t like the nature of it. Sometimes, it was fun, working with D-Von was fun,” Batista said.

As weeks and months passed by working the gimmick, Batista feared for his job, thinking he was going to get fired on a number of occasions because he wasn’t progressing.

“But there were more than a few occasions where I thought I would lose my job. I just put all this pressure on myself and I wasn’t performing well. I wasn’t progressing. I wasn’t the guy that they needed me to be,” Batista said.

Batista was able to shed the Deacon Batista gimmick and became a multi-time world champion with WWE and is set to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame later this year. Batista also spoke about nearly losing his spot at Evolution to Mark Jindrak and you can read his comments on the matter here.