Born

Born in Washington, D.C., Dave is the son of Donna Raye who has Greek ancestry and David Michael Bautista, Filipino immigrant in the USA who worked as a hairdresser. Bautistas parents divorced he was young and he was brought up his paternal grandfather who after serving in the Philippines military worked as a barber and taxi driver in the US. Bautista has admitted that he had a difficult childhood and when he was about 13 years old he started stealing automobiles. When he was about 17 years old, he went to live on his own and started working as a bouncer at various clubs but had to leave his job after an ugly brawl with a few patrons at one of the clubs; which left two people injured and one of them was rendered unconscious. He was sentenced to one year probation and later he worked as a lifeguard. Bautista eventually took up a career in bodybuilding, which opened doors for him to enter the film industry.