There are times in professional wrestling when real life spills into the arena and has nothing to do with staged drama. One of those moments came when Montez Ford entered an NXT house show in early February 2026 and grinned, saying, “I got my weight up,” in response to the crowd’s whispers. unplanned. Sincere. Strangely charming.
Ford hadn’t appeared on WWE television in a few months, so when video of him at that live event started making the rounds online, people reacted right away. Fans couldn’t stop discussing it on Twitter and Reddit. The majority appeared genuinely curious about what had happened to one of the team’s most athletically talented players, though some were shocked and some were rude. His explosive body, which made his frog splash off the top rope appear almost effortless, had always been his hallmark. His own casual acknowledgment only partially addressed the questions raised by his noticeably larger stature.
It turns out that the reason for the weight gain was much warmer and less dramatic than the rumors circulating online. During this time, Bianca Belair, one of WWE’s most well-known female stars and his wife, was sidelined due to an injury. Belair, who never settles for anything halfway, had reportedly been cooking, and the two were spending a lot more time together at home. Cooking really well. On Valentine’s Day, she shared a post about it herself, writing with her usual charm that she had “been feeding him good” and had decided to feed her followers as well. The fans melted. Even though the wrestling internet was preoccupied with taking screenshots, it’s difficult not to find something genuinely endearing about that dynamic.
What Ford disclosed a few months later is what, in retrospect, adds interest to the story. He revealed that he and Belair had been secretly expecting their first child together for six months in an Instagram post that included a carousel of transformation pictures. His prolonged absence from television is consistent with the timeline. He wasn’t just taking a break or handling issues with his contract. Away from cameras and live events, he was living a genuine life while navigating one of the most important personal chapters of his life.
When viewed through that lens, the body change takes on a different meaning. Weight gain begins to feel less like a cautionary tale and more like a human reaction to human circumstances when a man is keeping a huge secret, spending more time at home than he may have in years, and leaning into domesticity for once. Some of the criticism directed at him during those early February appearances might have completely overlooked this.
What followed, however, was beyond dispute. In his post, Ford made it clear that he had dropped the weight following two months of intense training. It seems that the argument was sufficiently made on the fifth slide of that carousel to require little explanation. According to several accounts, Ford appeared to be in the best physical shape of his career by the time The Street Profits made a comeback on Raw following WrestleMania 42 in April 2026. He and Angelo Dawkins stormed out to help Seth Rollins against Logan Paul and Austin Theory, and if anyone in that building was still thinking about the footage from the February house show, it wasn’t for very long. The return itself had its own energy.
This raises a more general point about how wrestling fans interact with the bodies of performers in a way that is uncommon in other sports entertainment settings. Ford didn’t seem to care about it, which may indicate where he is in his life and career. A man who spent more than ten years developing a respectable athletic career, served in the U.S. Marine Corps, and received a perfect score on the physical fitness test most likely has a fairly grounded sense of self that is independent of what Reddit thinks of his midsection in any given month.
After winning the World Tag Team Titles in June, the Street Profits’ brief reign came to an end in July. As usual, the wrestling industry moves quickly. However, the Montez Ford weight gain story—if you can even call it that anymore—turned out to be more nuanced than the initial response implied. He had a baby on the way, a wife he obviously loves, and a brief physical transformation that he publicly acknowledged before making the necessary corrections on his own terms. In his own words, the king has returned.
