He began his WWE career on May 9 2002 as Deacon Bautista, Batista had his first WWE match in a tag match teaming with D-Von against Randy Orton and Faarooq. Batista pinned Orton to win that match. Batista later moved to "RAW", and was renamed Dave Batista (or simply Batista). He joined with Ric Flair and fought many times with Kane, whom he beat in his first pay-per-view at Armageddon 2002.