How Bianca Belair Really Ended Up As A WWE Superstar
A WWE Hall of Famer has revealed the initial conversation that led to Bianca Belair starting a new life as a pro wrestler.
Bianca Belair is one of WWE’s biggest homegrown stars ever, graduating from NXT before making a splash on the main roster.
Belair has held championship gold and won the Royal Rumble match in 2021. However, injury has stopped The EST in her tracks in 2025. The last time WWE fans saw Bianca Belair in the ring was at WrestleMania 41, when she was part of the match for the Women’s World Championship with IYO SKY and Rhea Ripley.
Belair suffered an injury to her finger that has been slower to heal than anticipated. However, despite her absence, Belair is one of the current favourites to win the 2026 Royal Rumble.
But all of that is a far cry from what Belair was doing before she was spotted by a WWE Hall of Famer.
Mark Henry Talent Spotted Bianca Belair
Speaking on The Undertaker’s Six Feet Under podcast, Mark Henry explained how he saw Bianca Belair at a CrossFit event, and he sent her on the path to becoming a WWE Superstar:
I saw Bianca Belair at the national championships for CrossFit, and she’s doing cartwheels. You’re supposed to be conserving your energy, and she’s doing cartwheels between the implements.
She had on like a fluffy tutu and a big, giant Mickey Mouse bow in her hair while she was competing. I said, ‘This girl don’t need to be in this; she needs to be a wrestler. ’
So I looked her up on social media, and she was like 18, 17, something like that, and I was like ‘damn, I ain’t calling no young girl, let me see who could do this for me’. So I got Mark Carrano to get one of the ladies, Holly was the one that called her. I said ‘Can you call this girl and get her information, find out who her mom and dad is? I need to talk to somebody’s parents. ’
So they reached out and called the girl, she was like ‘Mark Henry, like the wrestler Mark Henry?’ I said, ‘Tell her I need to talk to her dad, or mom or somebody.’
Her dad called me the next day, and I talked to him. He said ‘Is this really the real Mark Henry? We’ve been watching wrestling for years!’ I was like, yeah! It was meant to be!
Henry revealed that he’s been responsible for getting many of WWE’s current stars on the roster, and that’s a legacy that he can be proud of:
Now I reach out, there’s 16 of them that have either been in a title match or won a title, a world title. So my success rate is really high. There’s a couple of them, there’s a big deal at Full Sail, now the Performance Center.
It was WrestleMania 2017, a year before I retired, and there was like 20 kids of colour down at the facility training. Montez Ford was one of them, and about 16 or 17 of them were invitees from me.
I wasn’t there, I’m going by the story Bianca was saying, and everyone went around the table saying ‘Mark Henry called me and told me I should be in wrestling’, and that’s gonna be the thing that outlives me.