Manny Pacquiao lost a lot of friends when he made homophobic comments in 2016. It turns out that one of them was WWE legend Dave Bautista who is half Filipino and had been a huge fan of the boxers.
Bautista revealed yesterday that he was so upset by comments the boxer turned politician made on the campaign train that he had a Manny Pacquiao tattoo removed:
Dave Bautista reveals he had a tattoo of Manny Pacquiao's team logo removed after his homophobic statements in 2016:
“I had a huge issue with it. It's a personal issue with me, my mom's a lesbian. And I just could no longer call him a friend.”
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— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 6, 2023
Losing friends
Pacquiao lost a lot of friends when he made the comments in question. he subsequently apologized but the damage was done after remarks which can be translated as,
It’s common sense. Will you see any animals where male is to male and female is to female? The animals are better. They know how to distinguish male from female. If we approve (of) male on male, female on female, then man is worse than animals.
While Pacquiao was forced to apologize he remains opposed to gay marriage and didn’t win himself any new friends in the LGBTQ community when he defended his comments by quoting a passage from the bible that supposedly supports his point of view.
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No coming back
Bautista made his name wrestling on WWE shows but is now a successful actor. It seems he had a tattoo of Manny Pacquiao’s team logo and, while he never mentioned the boxer by name, it is pretty clear who he is referring to in these comments about his changed tattoo he made to GQ,
It used to be a team logo,. I was part of a team of a person I considered a friend and someone I really looked up to. And then, he later came out publicly with some anti-gay statements and turned out to be an extreme homophobe.
The two men had formerly been friends but Bautista says there was ‘no coming back’ for Pacquiao once he had read about the boxer’s comments on same sex relationships. At the time he told TMZ,
You can’t come back from that, man. There’s no coming back from that.
It is difficult to gauge whether Pacquiao’s history of homophobia dented his political hopes. He came up short in a bid to be elected president of the Philippines earlier this year.
He remains a senator with a big fan following in the Philippines. But the boxer turned politician lost at least one friend after making those ill judged comments back in 2016.
