Bianca Belair has been one of the most prominent wrestlers in WWE in recent years. She has achieved several successes and titles, her most notable achievement being having the longest title reign with the Raw women’s champion in history, with a total of 420 days. However, she lost that title to Asuka at Night of Champions, to regain it again at SummerSlam but lost the same night to IYO SKY, who would redeem her Money in the Bank briefcase.

Now Belair is looking to reclaim the tag team gold that she once held with Jade Cargill. As the EST of the WWE is looking forward to winning her match against Isla Dawn and Alba Fyre. If she wins the match, she’ll be adding another gold to her record books. One that truly has several pages of her achievements in the WWE. But even before came the Stamford-based promotion, Belair was rocking the athletics scene.

Prior to her WWE run, Belair was an athlete and used to run hurdles for her school and college track team. In fact, that also earned her a scholarship at the University of South Carolina.

However, she changed universities and moved to Texas A&M University and then the University of Tennessee. But why did she change universities? Well, that’s because the EST developed a serious eating disorder.

Bianca Belair’s struggles with the eating disorder

Belair had been into athletics ever since she was a 5-year-old child. In fact, her dream was to be a track and field star, something that she was on the path of achieving as she was actually really good on the track. However, the mental pressure got a hold of her during her high school days. Something that would soon cause a major hurdle in her life. The EST began to have eating disorders in her last year of high school. Since she was a child she was a muscular person, so she suffered insults from her peers, who compared her to a man. As a result, she started losing weight.

But her health wasn’t good and she couldn’t compete in his senior year in high school. While talking to BT Sport’s Ariel Helwani, Belair openly spoke about her time in a psychiatric hospital after she reached college. She said, “Not realizing that I was carrying it all with me to Texas A&M, which is why I was unsuccessful there. Texas A&M, amazing program, amazing coach. Coach Vince Anderson at the time was the one who, at my lowest point, pulled me from the track team. He told me, ‘You can’t compete until you get yourself together mentally because this is more important than what you do on the track.”

She further added, “It got to a point where I was put into a psychiatric hospital. It got that low. I was still hiding it and that was when everyone found out. So he was the one, once I got out, he said, ‘I can’t come back.’ He made me see a psychiatrist, he was like, ‘You have to get yourself together mentally because that is what is more important.’ He was the first person who put my mental health above anything else. My parents, I was finally open up to my parents and be vulnerable to them, and that was one big major step to my recovery with everything.”

However, once the EST returned home to Knoxville, she started her path to complete recovery. She took CrossFit as a sport and even participated in several events at the regional level before she finally received a call from the Stamford-based promotion as they wanted her to join their performance center in Orlando. And before you know it, she became the woman who rules Monday Night Raw and is now on her way to the tag team throne. What do you think? Will Belair be able to get back her tag team gold? Let us know in the comments.