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Actor and former WWE wrestler Dave Bautista recently shared in an interview with GQ that he covered up a tattoo of his former friend and idol Manny Pacquiao after he made anti-gay statements.
Pacquiao, nicknamed as “PacMan” is regarded as one of the greatest professional boxers of all time. Bautista shared that he looked up to him and got a tattoo of Manny Pacquiao’s team logo but covered it up after he “turned out to be an extreme homophobe”.
It used to be a team logo,” Bautista said in the interview with GQ. “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…”
“So, I had a huge issue with it,” he continued. “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.” The logo was replaced with a portrait of a woman.
In 2016, Pacquiao spoke to a Filipino news outlet and compared gay people to animals.
"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."
He later issued an apology and retracted his statement after receiving heavy backlash. Despite the apology back then, Bautista called him a “F**king Idiot” for his comments.