Please forgive the essay; I have thoughts.

Bianca Belair missed WWE SummerSlam 2024 last year as she and Jade Cargill defended the women’s tag titles the previous night on “SmackDown” instead, and she’s not scheduled to compete at WWE SummerSlam 2025. That said, reports as recently as June claimed that Belair (who last wrestled at WrestleMania in April, where she broke her fingers) was at one point earmarked for a SummerSlam return, and as it happens, two people she’s in a long-term storyline with, Cargill and Naomi, are heavily favored to walk out of New Jersey with WWE’s top two women’s singles championships. In other words, a lot of people are about to get a refresher on who the hell Bianca Belair is, and if you want to get a head start, there’s no better way than to watch her trilogy of SummerSlam matches from 2021 to 2023. Belair’s WrestleMania matches get a lot of hype, which they deserve — her five Mania performances thus far range from “good” to “great” to “era-defining” — but while those matches showcase why Belair is a great wrestler, these three SummerSlam matches showcase why she’s a great character.

They also incorporate more of wrestling’s unique insanity, as demonstrated by the first one in 2021. Belair was scheduled to defend her “SmackDown” Women’s Championship against Sasha Banks (now AEW’s Mercedes Mone) in a rematch from their classic at WrestleMania 37. It’s never been clear why Banks was pulled from the match (the rumor at the time was that she’d contracted COVID-19) or exactly when WWE knew she’d be unavailable, but they continued to promote Banks vs. Belair until the moment Banks was supposed to come out. After it was announced that Banks couldn’t compete, Belair prepared to defend against Banks flunky Carmella instead — until “The Man” Becky Lynch unexpectedly returned from maternity leave, blowing the roof off Allegiant Stadium and setting up a Lynch vs. Belair dream match for the title.

Instead, Lynch sucker-punched Belair, dropped her with a Manhandle Slam, and notoriously won the belt in 26 seconds. Reports from the time indicate bringing Lynch back early (she had been slated to return a couple months later) and the quick title change were Vince McMahon ideas explicitly conceived as big moments to make up for the loss of the Banks/Belair rematch. Fans at the time were furious on Belair’s behalf which, as Lynch pointed out, was the point. Belair, for her part, credited Lynch with getting the story through to the finish line, which saw Belair regain the title from Lynch at WrestleMania 38. As a result, the SummerSlam 2021 match can be enjoyed through a strictly narrative lens, and the nuances of Belair’s performance in the moment can be appreciated. She sells the multiple changes to the situation so well — frustration at Banks being pulled, resolve to defeat Carmella, shock and delight (but also hesitation) at Lynch’s return and the prospect of the dream match, shock and horror at the quick defeat, and finally a sort of forced competitive stoicism in which she’s clearly trying to tell herself that Lynch was simply the better woman on the right night, even though some part of her knows that’s not the case, that she was lured into a trap by the wily veteran who would shortly come to be known as “Big Time Becks.” It’s the first step in the cementing of Belair, not just as a top wrestler — WrestleMania 37 had already done that — but as a top babyface, someone WWE would crown over a star of Lynch’s status at an event like WrestleMania.

SummerSlam 2022 was an entirely different and much bigger animal. That night, Lynch vs. Belair was also informed by an unexpected absence, though Banks had walked out months earlier — their PLE opener represented the dawn of “the Paul Levesque era,” as SummerSlam occurred just eight days after Vince McMahon “retired” following revelations published by the Wall Street Journal. It’s arguably even better than their WrestleMania 38 bout and is certainly the best of this particular SummerSlam trilogy, but more important is the fact that it brings a third Horsewoman into the mix — Bayley, who returned from a year-long injury after Belair retained and brought Dakota Kai and IYO SKY with her, forming Damage CTRL. Just as Lynch’s quick win over Belair in 2021 was a direct result of Banks’ unavailability, so the involvement of Kai and SKY was a direct result of McMahon’s departure, as was the post-match handshake between Belair and Lynch, which began the transition of Lynch back into her popular babyface “The Man” persona. From a character standpoint, Belair had spent a year finally earning the respect of Lynch, only to be plagued by Bayley and Damage CTRL — more unforeseen variables in the form of Kai and SKY — for the next year plus. Furthermore, while she’d reached peak babyface stardom in 2022, that started to change in 2023. Her reign with what is now the WWE Women’s Championship is still the longest in that title’s history, but by the end of it, fans had started cheering the likes of SKY and Asuka, the latter of whom would ultimately dethrone Belair before eventually joining Damage CTRL. Making things even worse for Belair was the return of the fourth Horsewoman, Charlotte Flair, who almost immediately got involved with Asuka, forcing Belair to fight just to stay involved in the title picture as Asuka and Flair threatened to leave her behind.

All of this culminates at SummerSlam 2023 in the triple threat match between Asuka, Flair, and Belair, which is the best babyface performance of Belair’s career and honestly one of the best I’ve seen. Belair battles her heart out in that match, fighting through a beautifully worked knee injury that even sees her briefly go up the ramp as though forced out of action, only to return and secure a gritty roll-up to regain the championship. It’s a moment that essentially validates her entire career to that point, cementing her in the WWE women’s division’s upper echelon — and then it’s undone a few heartbeats later when SKY cashes in her Money in the Bank contract, heartlessly taking advantage of Belair’s hurt knee before taking her title as well. In this third match, there’s no backstage drama driving creative; there’s just the extremely dumb but somehow legal rules of wrestling which say that sometimes you go to war, win, and then lose everything immediately because somebody ran out and handed the referee a briefcase. The trilogy ends the way it began — with Belair losing her title in a few seconds because professional wrestling isn’t fair.

SKY retained the title in a much longer match against Belair in November at Crown Jewel. For almost six months after that, Belair didn’t participate in a world title match, joining Cargill in the tag division instead. Her first world title match after losing to SKY was also her most recent match period, another triple threat at WrestleMania 41 — where she lost to SKY yet again, this time immediately after hitting Rhea Ripley with a presumably match-ending KOD. Between getting booed by the crowd and her long history of getting betrayed and screwed over, Belair was already flirting with heel status before WrestleMania. What will she do if she comes back to find both Cargill and Naomi as world title holders? The specifics are still unknown, but a reckoning is coming — and if you watch her matches from SummerSlam 2021, 2022, and 2023, you’ll understand exactly who Bianca Belair is when she finally makes her move.

Written by Miles Schneiderman