Jason Momoa has finally settled the kind of debate that usually lives in gym locker rooms and fan forums, spelling out exactly who he thinks would win if he ever stepped into a cage with Dave Bautista. Instead of hyping himself up, the Aquaman star leaned into self-deprecating humor and gave full credit to his co-star’s fighting pedigree. The result is a rare glimpse at how two of Hollywood’s most physically imposing actors think about strength, age, and respect when the spotlight turns into an imaginary octagon.
His answer, delivered while promoting their new film The Wrecking Crew, was not just a throwaway joke. It was a running bit that Momoa repeated across a premiere carpet and interviews, turning a hypothetical brawl into a window on his friendship with Bautista, their shared Dune universe history, and the way modern action stars balance bravado with humility.
The moment Jason Momoa picked a winner
The spark for the cage match chatter came as Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista were out promoting their upcoming film The Wrecking Crew, when a simple question about who would win in a fight quickly became a headline-ready soundbite. Instead of dodging the scenario or playing coy, Momoa leaned into the fantasy matchup and immediately framed Bautista as the clear favorite, treating the idea of himself as the victor as almost laughable. That choice set the tone for everything that followed, turning a standard promo stop into a viral talking point built on mutual respect rather than macho posturing.
At the New York premiere of The Wrecking Crew, Momoa joked on the carpet that his co-star would win in a hypothetical showdown, making it clear that in his mind Bautista’s combat background would overwhelm any advantage he might have in size or agility. The playful admission, captured in clips from the premiere, showed the pair laughing together as Momoa repeated that Bautista would come out on top both in a staged cage match and in a real fight, cementing the idea that this was more than a one-off quip.
“On the street, in the shower… anywhere”
Once the question was out there, Momoa did not just answer it once and move on, he escalated the bit with a string of deliberately over-the-top scenarios. In a separate interview, he rattled off locations where Bautista would supposedly beat him, turning the hypothetical cage into every possible setting and underlining how lopsided he believed the matchup would be. The repetition made it clear that he was not hedging or leaving room for debate, he was leaning fully into the idea that Bautista’s fighting instincts would follow him into any environment.
“On the street, in the shower… anywhere,” he recited, before adding, “In a closet, f–king in the theatre, Dave is always gonna win!” The explicit language and escalating list of places were delivered with a grin, but they also underscored how seriously Momoa takes Bautista’s physical credibility, as captured in the interview that highlighted his colorful description of Dave always winning. By stretching the joke across such an absurd range of locations, Momoa managed to be both profane and oddly sincere about his co-star’s dominance.
Why Momoa keeps saying “Dave’s gonna win”
Behind the humor, Momoa’s repeated insistence that he would lose speaks to how he views Bautista’s background as an ex-WWE star. In his mind, years spent performing as a professional wrestler, training for high impact matches, and living inside a ring give Bautista an edge that no amount of superhero conditioning can erase. Momoa might be used to wielding tridents and swinging axes on screen, but he clearly believes that experience in actual combat sports choreography translates into a real advantage if things ever got serious.
He boiled that logic down into a simple refrain, saying “Dave’s [Bautista] gonna win” whenever the matchup came up, and then expanding on it by listing more situations where “The Animal” would effectively defeat him. In one account of his comments, Momoa even framed Bautista as winning “every fight,” a nod to the persona that Bautista built in the ring under the nickname The Animal. By invoking that moniker and repeating the same conclusion, Momoa turned a playful rivalry into a kind of tribute to Bautista’s past life in wrestling.
The Dune connection and a running joke
Their imagined cage match does not exist in a vacuum, it is layered on top of a shared history that stretches back to Dune: Part Two, where Jason Momoa and Dave Bau appeared in the same sprawling sci-fi saga. That earlier collaboration helped establish an easy rapport between them, one that now spills over into their banter about who would win in a fight. When Momoa talks about losing to Bautista, it sounds less like a concession and more like a continuation of a long-running joke between colleagues who have already survived massive franchise sets together.
During a recent interview, Momoa explicitly framed the cage match question in the context of working with his Dune: Part Two co-star, treating Bautista’s presence as both a professional anchor and a friendly foil. The way he laughed through the scenario, while still insisting that Bautista would beat him, echoed the camaraderie that fans saw when the two shared the same universe in Dune: Part Two. That shared franchise history gives their mock rivalry extra weight, since audiences already associate them with epic battles on distant planets.
Age, size, and the Aquaman factor
One of the more striking parts of Momoa’s admission is that he gives Bautista the edge even though the former wrestler is a decade older. In most sports debates, age is treated as a disadvantage, especially in physically punishing environments like a cage fight. Momoa, however, brushes that aside, effectively arguing that Bautista’s experience and toughness outweigh any concerns about the years between them. It is a subtle acknowledgment that raw youth or slightly fresher legs do not automatically translate into dominance when the other person has spent a career absorbing and delivering punishment.
That perspective is particularly notable coming from someone whose own screen persona is built around invincibility. Jason Momoa is best known to many as Aquaman, a superhero defined by brute strength and resilience, yet he still insists that Dave Bautista would “kick his butt” in a real confrontation. In one video segment, the point is made explicitly, with the narrator noting that Bautista may be older than Momoa but that the Aquaman star still expects to lose if things ever turned physical, a dynamic highlighted in coverage of Bautista being a. The contrast between Momoa’s on-screen power and his off-screen humility is part of what makes his answer resonate.
The Wrecking Crew and a built-in rivalry
The promotional push for The Wrecking Crew has leaned heavily on the chemistry between its two hulking leads, and the cage match talk fits neatly into that strategy. By playfully debating who would win in a fight, Momoa and Bautista are effectively selling the idea that their on-screen partnership is built on real-world familiarity and a willingness to poke fun at themselves. The more Momoa insists that he would lose, the more it invites audiences to imagine the kind of bone-crunching action the pair might deliver together in the film itself.
At the New York premiere of their upcoming film The Wrecking Crew, the two actors worked the carpet side by side, with Momoa again joking that Bautista would win in a hypothetical fight and Bautista playing along as the good-natured heavy. That moment, captured in social clips from New York event, reinforced the idea that the rivalry is part of the film’s marketing DNA. Rather than presenting themselves as competing egos, they leaned into a dynamic where one openly defers to the other’s toughness, which in turn makes their partnership feel more grounded and less manufactured.
How fans turned a joke into a fantasy matchup
Once Momoa’s comments started circulating, fans quickly seized on the idea of a Jason Momoa versus Dave Bautista showdown as a kind of dream fight. Social media threads filled with side-by-side photos, mock tale-of-the-tape breakdowns, and debates over whether wrestling experience would really trump Momoa’s leaner, more acrobatic build. The fact that Momoa himself kept insisting he would lose did little to slow the speculation, if anything it gave fans more material to argue about as they weighed his humility against their own perceptions of his physicality.
Coverage of his remarks framed them as a definitive answer to the question, but the way he phrased his comments left plenty of room for imagination. One write-up emphasized how Momoa “reveals who’d win” in a cage match with Bautista, but the underlying story was less about settling a score and more about showcasing their rapport and the playful way they talk about violence that will never actually happen. That nuance is clear in pieces that highlight how Jason Momoa reveals he thinks would win, while still treating the whole thing as a lighthearted sideshow to their real work.
Respect for “The Animal” behind the punchlines
Strip away the jokes about showers and closets, and what remains is a clear throughline of respect from Momoa toward Bautista. By repeatedly calling him the inevitable winner, Momoa is effectively acknowledging the years Bautista spent building his body, his timing, and his persona inside the squared circle. Referring to him as “The Animal,” even indirectly, taps into that legacy and signals that Momoa sees his co-star as more than just another actor who hits the gym, he sees him as someone forged in a very specific, very punishing environment.
That respect also runs in the other direction, with Bautista visibly amused rather than offended when Momoa sells him as the unstoppable favorite. The tone of their exchanges suggests a friendship where both men are comfortable poking fun at themselves and each other, secure in the knowledge that their reputations can handle a little self-deprecation. When Momoa says that “Dave’s gonna win” in every scenario, as he did in the account that detailed his praise for Dave Bautista, it reads less like surrender and more like admiration dressed up as bravado.
Why Momoa’s answer lands with audiences
Part of the reason Momoa’s cage match verdict has traveled so widely is that it cuts against the usual grain of celebrity self-promotion. Action stars are often expected to project invincibility, especially when they are in the middle of a press tour for a film that depends on their physical presence. By contrast, Momoa’s willingness to cast himself as the underdog, and to do so with such colorful language, feels disarming. It suggests a level of self-awareness about the gap between choreographed movie fights and the kind of ring-tested instincts that someone like Bautista brings to the table.
It also helps that the scenario is safely hypothetical, which allows fans to enjoy the debate without any real stakes. Momoa and Bautista are not actually stepping into a cage, they are stepping onto red carpets and into interview chairs, using the idea of a fight as a way to entertain and to underline their bond. The consistency of Momoa’s answer, from the first time he was asked through the many times he repeated it while promoting The Wrecking Crew and referencing their Dune: Part Two connection, has turned a simple question into a running gag that doubles as a character study. In the end, the only clear winner is the audience, which gets to see two of Hollywood’s biggest tough guys treat toughness itself as something to laugh about rather than cling to.
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