Angie Bautista, born Angie Lewis, married Dave Bautista at a courthouse in Virginia in 1998, the two of them in jeans, with a pair of plain silver rings she had bought herself. Afterward they celebrated with chili dogs and orange Gatorade. He was not famous yet.
Within a few years, Dave would become one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling and, later, a Hollywood actor. Angie became known to the public for something neither of them planned, after doctors found ovarian cancer that nearly killed her. She has stayed quiet ever since.
Table of Contents
Who is Angie Bautista?
Angie Bautista is an American woman known as the ex-wife of WWE star and actor Dave Bautista. She was married to him from 1998 to 2006, and during that time she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Most people recognize her former husband as Batista in the wrestling ring, or as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy. Angie herself never sought attention. Her birth date has never been made public, and little about her early life is on record.
A marriage that began before the fame
Angie and Dave met in the early 1990s, before he signed his first wrestling contract. Records disagree on the exact date of their 1998 wedding, with some listing October and others November, though they agree it was a small ceremony with none of the trappings that came later.
His career took off soon after. Bautista signed with the WWE around 2000 and broke out as Batista on SmackDown in 2002. The constant travel and the time away from home wore on the marriage. In a 2021 interview with Men’s Health, Dave was candid about his own role, recalling that Angie wanted him home more and that he would not pull back from the work. “I chose my career, because it was the only shot I had,” he said.
They divorced in 2006, after about eight years together, though the two stayed close in the years that followed.
Angie Bautista’s ovarian cancer diagnosis
Angie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer on September 9, 2002, while she and Dave were still married. The early signs were the kind that are easy to brush off. A dedicated bodybuilder in strong shape, she noticed a few changes that did not add up:
- bruises she could not account for
- food she struggled to keep down
- a steady drop in her energy
She was told at first that her training was the likely cause. The symptoms held, and a sonogram found a tumor on her right ovary. Treatment followed with the chemotherapy drugs Taxol and Carboplatin, and she moved in and out of remission over the next several years.
Angie later pointed to her bodybuilding background as what first warned her something was wrong, and she pushed against the idea that illness has one appearance. “Cancer doesn’t look like one thing,” she told the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance, adding that someone who looks fit can still be seriously sick.
‘Bautista vs. Cancer’ and her own words
In 2010, Dave worked with a longtime friend, former WWE head of security Jimmy Noonan, on a video to raise money for ovarian cancer research. The project took about two years. The idea came up over dinner, filming began a week later in San Francisco, and the finished video went out that August through the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance.
Angie did not know it had been dedicated to her until it was done. When she spoke about it, she kept the attention on other women, saying she was proud of the two men and that she wanted others to feel they could face the disease instead of fearing it. She told women to trust their instincts when their bodies signaled something was off.
Where is Angie Bautista now?
As of 2026, Angie has not returned to public life, and no new information about her has surfaced in years. She has not given an interview or posted anything publicly since the 2010 fundraiser. Figures that circulate about her current job, her income, or where she lives do not trace back to anything she or her family has confirmed.
Most of what is known about her life after the divorce involves her son. Angie and Dave had a boy, Oliver, in 2007, conceived through IVF while she was in remission. He arrived a year after the split, during the stretch when the two had grown close again, and Angie has called him her miracle baby.
She lent her name to one cancer campaign and raised her son away from cameras. Beyond that, she has let her former husband’s books and interviews stand in for her own account. Sixteen years after that video, she has added little to it.
