The current Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair is on top of the world right now and one of the biggest stars in WWE. She successfully defended her gold at SummerSlam just two weeks ago against Becky Lynch which closed the chapter in their year-long feud that was highly regarded by many fans.
During the week of SummerSlam, Belair sat down with Ariel Helwani and spoke about being back in her hometown of Nashville and how this was a full circle moment for her not just professionally but personally.
During the interview, Helwani brought up that Belair had gone to three different colleges and inquired what was the reason for the changes throughout her academic career. Belair became very candid in her response and opened up about struggling with an eating disorder and also her mental health.
“My freshman year, I just struggled so much mentally. I was struggling with an eating disorder secretly in high school, so when I got to college I told myself ‘okay I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m gonna be healthy.’ I just had a very unhealthy relationship with food.”
She continues to discuss her academic journies and added the following in regards to her coach at the time Vince Anderson who helped her through her struggles –
“I was put into a psychiatric hospital. It got that low… That’s when everyone found out. He [Anderson] was the one, once I got out, who said ‘you can’t come back.’ He made me go see a psychiatrist. He was like ‘you have to get yourself together mentally because that’s what is more important.
He was the first person really that put my mental health above anything else. My parents, I was able to finally open up to my parents and be vulnerable to them and that was the one big major step to my recovery with everything. So, I could have stayed at Texas A & M but I decided that I needed to go home and rely on my family and really just start over.”
For more on Belair’s interview, you can check out both parts below –
