Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
Tickets go on sale this Friday for “WrestleMania 40” next spring in Philadelphia, so folks in the D.C. area can start planning a fun road trip that will take less than two hours to drive 100 miles from Baltimore to Philly!
The two-day event on April 6-7, 2024 marks the closest “WrestleMania” to the D.C. area in 25 years, since “Stone Cold” Steve Austin beat The Rock at “WrestleMania 15” in Philadelphia in 1999. Before that, the next closest was “WrestleMania 4” when Hulk Hogan beat “Macho Man” Randy Savage in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1989.
“‘WrestleMania’ is the biggest show of the year,” Belair told WTOP. “Everything comes to a head at ‘WrestleMania,’ all the storylines, all the feuds, you’ll have the biggest matches of the year, we consider it our Super Bowl of WWE. People travel from all over the world to come to ‘WrestleMania.’ … It’s 70,000 or 80,000 people, the crowd is electrifying, you have big entrances, the best gear, the pyro, the fireworks, it’s going to be an amazing event.”
Earlier this month at “SummerSlam” in Detroit on Aug. 5, Belair defeated Asuka and Charlotte Flair to win the WWE Women’s Championship. Immediately after, Iyo Sky ran to the ring and cashed in her No. 1 contender “Money in the Bank” briefcase, pinning an exhausted and injured Belair, who rapidly lost the title in a twist.
“So much happened at ‘SummerSlam,’ I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it,” Belair said. “I got to hold the WWE Women’s Title up in the air, I thought I was going to go to the hotel and celebrate with my family … Iyo’s music hit, she comes out, cashes in the ‘Money in the Bank’ briefcase and she takes the title from me. I think I held the title for 90 seconds. … Hey, 90 seconds or not, it still counts, I became a three-time women’s champion.”
Belair could very well begin her heated quest for revenge this Friday night on “Smackdown” on Fox, ramping up to the next Premium Live Event at “WWE Payback” streaming on Peacock on Saturday, Sept. 2.
“It’s so perfect for me to get my payback,” Belair said. “I wasn’t on ‘Smackdown’ last week, ‘SummerSlam’ I had a pretty bad injury to my knee, so just trying to take a week off. … I’m definitely coming back for my revenge on Iyo — and Bayley, too. That’s what makes it hard. It’s not just Iyo, she has Bayley by her side and Dakota Kai. … I’ve been feuding with Damage CTR for almost a year now, so I know them in and out like the back of my hand.”
While Iyo Sky is the women’s champ on “Smackdown,” Rhea Ripley is the women’s champ on “Raw,” while Becky Lynch will face Trish Stratus in a cage match at “Payback,” showing the women’s division is stronger than ever.
“Our women’s division in WWE is so stacked,” Belair said. “We have so much depth to where there’s so many women who can go out and be the main event of the night, so many women that can be contenders to go after the titles. It’s exciting. The competition is thick, but that just pushes you to be the best. That’s why we have the best women’s roster in the world. You have to bring your ‘A’ game or somebody is going to be fighting for your spot.”
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1989, Belair became a track star at the University of Tennessee before shattering fitness records at the WWE Performance Center and joining the company’s developmental brand NXT in 2016.
In 2021, Belair made history by eliminating Rhea Ripley to become the first Black woman to win the women’s “Royal Rumble,” not to mention just the second Black athlete to do it after The Rock — you may have heard of him.
“I definitely realized how big the moment was,” Belair said. “Winning the Royal Rumble match was so exciting to me. I outlasted 29 other women and I remember being in that moment, realizing I just won the Royal Rumble and I was in the moment celebrating so much that I forget what came with winning the Royal Rumble. Then I turned to the left and saw the ‘WrestleMania’ sign and I remembered, ‘Oh yeah, that means I’m going to ‘WrestleMania.'”
A few months later, Belair made history again by beating Sasha Banks to win the “Smackdown” women’s title at “WrestleMania 37,” marking the first time that two Black superstars competed in the “WrestleMania” main event.
“That moment was just so emotional for me,” Belair said. “Anybody who goes back and watches that match can see where I get so overwhelmed that I’m in tears in the ring before the match starts because it’s going to go down in history. Then I got to walk out as champion from that match, then we won an ESPY off that match, so that whole year, that whole era was amazing and I definitely realized how big that was.”
While she lost that title to Becky Lynch later that year at “SummerSlam,” Belair got her revenge by beating Lynch at “WrestleMania” in 2022. She went on to become the longest reigning “Raw” women’s champ at 420 days, including successfully defending her title against Asuka at the most recent “WrestleMania” in April 2023.
Beyond all the impressive accolades and shattered glass ceilings, Belair is also just exciting to watch in the ring, sewing her own ring gear, swinging her long Rapunzel-style braid at her opponents and hitting them with her finishing move, a torture rack turned into a face-buster called the “K.O.D.,” which stands for the “Kiss of Death.”
“What you do in the ring is very important, but what’s more important is your presentation, it’s your brand,” Belair said. “I’m all about being very fashionable, my style is sporty glam, so I always try to have sequins or rhinestones to shine, kiss prints on my gear. Anytime you see me in the ring, a video game, action figure, that’s gear I made. … My No. one rule is don’t touch my hair, so when girls touch my hair, I swing it at them and hit them with the braid.”
Outside the ring, she’s married to WWE superstar Montez Ford of the tag team The Street Profits, one of the many male superstars fighting for storylines leading up to “WrestleMania 40.” Will we see a rematch between Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes? Could we see Jimmy Uso vs. Jey Uso in a battle of The Bloodline brothers? Will fan-favorite L.A. Knight continue his red-hot rise to take on the “Raw” men’s champ Seth Rollins?
There’s only one way to find out — by grabbing your ticket to “WrestleMania 40.”
“We do it big for every ‘WrestleMania’ and every ‘WrestleMania’ is different from the other, but ’40’ is going to be huge,” Belair said. “We always have some type of surprise entrances, surprise guest celebrities. Everybody is fighting to get to WWE even if you’re not in WWE, so it’s going to be huge, it’s definitely going to be worth your money, your time, your travel to come out. We’re going to pull out all the tricks in the hat for ‘WrestleMania 40.'”
Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
