Bianca Belair’s newest run is a peculiar one. The three-time ladies’s world champion was chosen No. 1 general within the 2024 WWE Draft. Her reserving over the next 10 months doesn’t scream main lady, regardless of two reigns as WWE ladies’s tag workforce champion. That might frustrate some superstars in a enterprise rife with massive personalities. For Belair, nevertheless, taking a break from the world title scene was transformative.
“I’ve discovered that you need to take the ego out of issues when it involves WWE,” Belair advised CBS Sports activities forward of the Elimination Chamber on Saturday. “I discovered it is necessary that the division must evolve. It is the entire level of this.
“I do know finally I’ll return to the singles image, however I really feel like it was a pleasant break for me. It would not all the time should be about you so that you can be happy with it. And I am very happy with the work that I’ve put in, the work that I’ve accomplished on this tag workforce division.”
Belair can reinsert herself into the singles title image briefly order. “The EST of WWE” is certainly one of six superstars competing in Saturday’s ladies’s Elimination Chamber match. At stake is a chance to problem ladies’s world champion Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania 41.
Such alternatives will not be international to Belair. She gained the 2021 Royal Rumble in her rookie 12 months, final eliminating Ripley en path to headlining evening certainly one of WrestleMania 37 with Sasha Banks — the primary time two Black superstars headlined WrestleMania. Most superstars work their approach up the ladder. Belair was thrown into the deep finish from the beginning.
“I gained the Royal Rumble and primary evented WrestleMania my very first 12 months. However I used to be used to being led,” Belair mentioned. “My very first WrestleMania, I am within the ring with a vet like Sasha Banks. Then I am in the ring with somebody like Becky Lynch, Bayley and Asuka. I needed to absorb and soak up as a lot as I might from them.
“I bear in mind once I turned Uncooked ladies’s champion, all of a sudden I assumed, ‘Oh! I am not within the ring with them anymore. I should lead.’ I received just a little bit uncomfortable as a result of I used to be so used to feeling protected. I felt so protected with them within the ring. Not within the sense of bodily, I knew we would have an incredible match. I’ve nice chemistry with them and so they’re main me. We’re good. So the one half I’d say I used to be uncomfortable with was now being on this new position the place I am checked out because the vet, however I nonetheless felt like I used to be studying.”
Try the total interview with Bianca Belair beneath.
Belair has loved shedding the stress of being ladies’s world champion. She will once more be taught from a extra skilled skilled wrestler, her tag workforce companion Naomi. The Triple Crown champion additionally sees the fruits of her labor constructing the comparatively new ladies’s tag workforce division as an alternative of residing as much as the WWE ladies’s title’s legacy.
However she should not get comfy for too lengthy. Many take into account Belair a favourite heading into the Elimination Chamber. Her first primary roster singles match in opposition to Ripley is lengthy overdue, and Belair is fast to remind others that she’s undefeated at WrestleMania.