Dave Bautista Covered Manny Pacquiao Tattoo After Homophobic Statement: 'It's a Personal Issue'
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Dave Bautista has made his support for the LGBTQ community known in a permanent way.
Although he did not mention his former friend by name, the Glass Onion star, 53, revealed to GQ that he had a tattoo of Filipino boxing champ Manny Pacquiao's team logo removed from his left forearm.
"It used to be a team logo," he said in a clip shared to TikTok. "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."
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"So, 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. So, I had it covered up with this," Bautista added, displaying the updated ink of a woman with a sugar skull face painting.
Pacquiao, 44, faced heavy backlash after stating that gay people are "worse than animals" during a 2016 interview on Filipino station TV5. "It's common sense," he said at the time.
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"The animals are better. They know how to distinguish male from female," Pacquiao added. "If we approve [of] male on male, female on female, then man is worse than animals."
Bautista, who has long been an LGBTQ ally, called Pacquiao a "f—ing idiot" at the time. "You can't come back from that, man. There's no coming back from that," he told TMZ.
"I don't think it's funny," Bautista said. "Let's put it like this, if anyone called my mother an animal, I'd stick my foot in his ass."
Although he later apologized for comparing gay people to animals, Pacquiao dug in his heels against the community. "But this does not change my position against same-sex marriage. That's what I believe," he said. "My only mistake is comparing gay people to animals."
Bautista previously showed his support for the LGBTQ community during Pride Month, paying tribute to his mom on Instagram with a photo of himself wearing a t-shirt printed with a rainbow and the words "BE YOU."
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"I was always proud of who my mom was because she was always proud of who she was. In your face, f— you if you don't like it, unapologetically loud and proud. And her son [paid] attention. BE LOUD, BE PROUD, BE YOU," Bautista wrote with the hashtag "#ProudSonOfALesbian."
