Dave Bautista Covered Up His Manny Pacquiao Tattoo After His Anti-Gay Comments, And The Internet Is Arguing About Again

Every once in a while, an old interview clip resurfaces online, and suddenly, the internet is back in a full-blown culture war debate. This time it’s a video of Dave Bautista explaining why he decided to cover up a tattoo he once had tied to boxing legend Manny Pacquiao.

And yeah, people have opinions.

In the clip, Bautista talks about how he originally had a tattoo of Pacquiao’s team logo because he was a big fan of the boxer. At the time, Pacquiao was one of the most famous fighters on the planet and had fans everywhere, including Bautista.

But things changed in 2016.

That was when Pacquiao made headlines after controversial remarks where he compared gay people to animals during an interview while discussing his views on same sex relationships. The backlash was immediate and huge. Pacquiao later apologized for the comments, and years later issued another apology in 2022.

For Bautista though, the damage was already done.

He explained that the comments hit especially close to home because his mother is a lesbian. According to Bautista, once those remarks came out he felt he couldn’t keep the tattoo anymore, so he decided to cover it up.

Pretty simple reasoning from his perspective.

But of course, the internet never leaves anything simple.

Now that the clip is circulating again, the replies are exactly what you’d expect. One side is praising Bautista for standing by his personal values and supporting his family. Their argument is basically that if something feels wrong to you, you have every right to remove something permanently inked on your body.

The other side is calling him overly sensitive and accusing him of bringing politics into something that happened almost a decade ago. Some people are pointing out that Pacquiao apologized multiple times and think that should have been enough.

Which leads to the bigger question that always seems to pop up with celebrity controversies.

At what point does an apology actually close the book?