Bianca Belair On Where She Got The Inspiration For The Braid
As previously noted, NXT Superstar Bianca Belair was a guest on Chasing Glory With Lilian Garcia. Among many other things, Belair talked about her meeting her husband WWE RAW's Montez Ford and how Ford influenced her iconic braid.
According to Belair, it was essentially love at first sight for her when 'The EST Of NXT' met Ford.
"For me, it was [sparks flying since day one]," Belair laughed. "I remember seeing him and thinking, 'I have friends here who can be witness to him. That's a beautiful man.' And I had an immediate crush on him, but, no, he got hurt for a while and he disappeared for a little while for a couple of months when I first started. But was kind of just an immediate connection and we've kind of been inseparable ever since and we got married."
In Belair's words, professional wrestling has unexpectedly brought her joy, a career, and her husband.
"It's just crazy because we come from two completely different sides of the world," Belair considered. "He was a Marine. He was in the military and I was just living life and going to college and working in Atlanta [Georgia]. And if it hadn't been for WWE and coming into [pro] wrestling, I wouldn't have found my husband through wrestling and wrestling has brought me so much joy and my husband. And it has brought me this career and I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else. And I'm just blessed."
While Ford frequently sings to the WWE Universe on RAW that we want the smoke, The Street Profit told Belair that we want the braid.
"Yeah, he definitely helped me come up with it. So I'm a huge Beyonce fan. She had a concert. She was on tour. She had, like, this long, huge braid. And she was, like, dancing with it and it just caught my eye. And I'm like, 'I want to do that.' Like, if that catches my eye, and wrestling is about standing out, and, like, being able to catch people's eyes, so I'm like, 'I want to do that braid.' So I did the braid, but I kind of did it just a hairstyle, just to feel it out. And I was kind of going back and forth with, 'oh, I really like to wear my hair down and I see all the other girls wearing their hair down and it's so pretty.' And I kind of wanted to do that and [Ford] was the one that told me, 'no, like, you have to keep that braid, like, it stands out, and trust me. Just trust me. Like, that's going to be a thing. Nobody else wears their hair like that. You're going to stand out. It's unique. I've never seen anything like that before. You have to keep it.' And so, I ended up keeping it. And then, he told me 'you can probably start using it in the ring. You can even do stuff in the ring with it. You can use it. Use that thing.' I was like, 'yeah, you're right!'" Belair added, "so he was kind of the mastermind behind keeping it and he sparked the thought process of, like, 'you can use it.' And so, he was a big influence on the braid."
Although Ford put a ring on it, the couple remain separated as Ford is a member of WWE's RAW roster while Belair remains with NXT. On the subject of not being on the road with Ford, Belair claimed that the distance is not at a frustrating point yet and that they are no strangers to making accommodations for WWE.
"I will say it has been a few months since and I will say that it hasn't been long enough to where I think it's to the point of, 'argh, this is awful,' but what I will say is that when I married him, we were both in WWE. We were both [pro] wrestlers and we kind of know how the business is. Our wedding – our wedding that we planned – our wedding was originally supposed to be on June 16. We handed out all the invitations. And then, as we're handing out the invitations, we found out, 'oh, there's a TakeOver on June 16.' And there may be a possibility that The Street Profits are in it, but we don't know, so we were like, 'okay, we already signed the contract,' but we changed our wedding date to June 23 and it was a big whole ordeal, but it's the sacrifice that we make for the business, so I think that we both collectively know how difficult it is, and how travel is, and the sacrifices we have to make." Belair said, "so I think that it helps out that I'm in the business too and with him being gone, I'm able to understand it a little more."
Belair, who recently talked about whether she is content in NXT, said she and Montez watch NWA Powerrr together via FaceTime as a means of spending time together despite being stuck on different WWE brands.
"We're just really big on communication. We talk all the time. He can even be in the hotel room and we're just on FaceTime. We have to keep charging our phones because they're dying. We're just on FaceTime. He can just be doing whatever in the room. I can be doing what I'm doing and we can be talking to each other, but we're just on FaceTime." Belair continued, "yeah, we have our show. We watch [NWA] Powerrr a lot and he's gone on Sundays and I don't want to wait for him to come back. And so, he'll pull it up and I'll pull it up and, like, we'll be on the phone like, 'okay, press 'play,' '1-2-3,' and we'll press 'play'. So we'll watch the show together, but in two different states. It's crazy, but we're making it work. We don't have a choice, but we're making it work."
Click here to listen to the show or check it out via the embedded player below. If you use any of the quotations from this article, please credit Chasing Glory With Lilian Garcia with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.