Bianca Belair states that Montez Ford is the one who should be recognized for her iconic braid.
Belair’s braid plays an essential role in her wrestling persona, and during her appearance on the “No-Contest Wrestling” podcast, she revealed that her husband encouraged her to include it in her on-screen character.
Belair said, “As far as the braid, the person behind the braid is actually [Montez Ford]. Yeah, so kudos to him. I’m a huge Beyonce fan, she wore a braid at the concert and I was like, I’m just gonna wear one just for a style. I wore it one time at practice and my coach was like, ‘If you’re gonna wear it, you’re gonna have to figure out how to use it because the girls are just gonna pull on it.’”
She continued, “I was talking to my husband like, ‘Well, I don’t know if I want to wear the braid, I kind of want to wear my hair down because I see what all of the other girls are doing, they have their hair down and it’s pretty.’ My husband was like, ‘Nope. The best way to be successful in this business is to stand out. Look at what everybody else is doing and do the complete opposite.’ He said, ‘Nobody else wears that braid, so, wear it. You’re going to stand out. Somebody might come to a show for the first time and they might not remember your name, but they’ll remember the girl with the braid.’ Because of him, I wore it and now it’s my thing.”
Donovan Dijak collaborated with AEW’s Mikey Rukus to create his entrance theme, “Capital Punishment,” and he recently reflected on that partnership during a recent appearance on the “Ropes N Riffs” podcast.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On working with Rukus: “Super talented guy. I’ve been following him since before he was with AEW. I’ve always been a fan of him. Unfortunately for me, by the time I became aware of him and his work, I was already with WWE. So I couldn’t utilize it in any capacity. But then I saw, you know, I saw the formation of AEW and I saw that they picked him up and I said, that’s a great, great grab for them. Within days, if not hours of me finding out that I wasn’t, that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed with WWE. was within the first, probably 10 people who I told. That includes my wife and my children and my close, close friends, my parents. might’ve found out before my parents, honestly.
“As soon as I got any sort of inkling that I wasn’t going, that I might not be with WWE anymore, I immediately hit him up. I said, “Hey, I’m a huge fan of your work. I would love to collaborate with you and create something, and I’d love to be as hands on as I possibly can be.” He was super accommodating within probably 48 hours, I think he got to work. We went back and forth quite a bit in terms of, he sent me, I think three or four different samples and he said, he thinks this one is the best and it’s the one that we ended up going with. I said, absolutely sounds the best. Can we tweak this? Can we add this to the entrance? We do something here in the middle part at the 45-second part? He changed all of it.”
On being happy with the song: “I’ve never been happier with a song before than with ‘Capital Punishment.’ I think it’s fantastic. In my opinion, the best part about it so far is that nobody’s even seen it with a full, full presentation. I think the best that we’ve got so far is that MLW, which has this wonderful screen, but there’s still elements of production where you can have you know smoke and lights and different cameras. There’s a million things you can do with it to really add to the essence of that presentation, so I think there’s so much more that we can do with that. The theme itself hits even in a you know a Knights of Columbus or a high school gym, you hear it and it gives me goosebumps every time so that’s why I think it’s it’s a tremendous piece of work.”
