NC’s Bojangles Champ has become a social-media star thanks to wrestling and chicken
Podcaster and social-media personality JZ Flair can trace both his love of professional wrestling and Bojangles chicken to his grandmothers.
Bojangles was his paternal grandmother’s favorite restaurant. He discovered wrestling, meanwhile, at age 12 while staying at his maternal grandparents’ house on Saturday nights. His grandpa’s Saturday-night staple was TNN’s Grand Ole Opry, but Flair leaned toward his grandmother’s preference for TBS’s World Championship Wrestling.
“I got hooked on it then, but it was the championship belts that got me really hooked (as an adult),” he says.
Flair, who works in law enforcement by day, recently wrapped his first wrestling podcast: “The JZ Flair Show,” which aired its final episode in November. Before independent pro-wrestling was sidelined by COVID-19-related restrictions, Flair was moonlighting as a wrestling manager in the tradition of famous non-wrestling in-ring characters like Jimmy Hart or Paul Heyman.
But it was connecting with other belt collectors that first led him to Twitter, where he attracted the attention of Bojangles.
“We’d take pictures of our belts and post them up,” says Flair, whose photos of his wife — a former model — also attracted attention. “Me and my wife enjoy working out and watch what we eat, but we agreed to have Bojangles as our cheat meal on Sundays. That’s how it started with Bojangles. I started taking pictures of my food and tagging them.”
“We’d take our meal and lay it out on the kitchen table and take a photo with my belt,” Flair says. “A whole lot of my followers don’t live in North Carolina and I had to explain what Bojangles was. If they were to fly into Charlotte, they’d try it out. It got to the point where I was tagging @Bojangles 80 to 100 times a month.”
That prompted the North Carolina-based fried-chicken chain, in 2018, to invite Flair to tour its facility and learn to make biscuits. During his visit, their social-media rep led Flair into a crowded conference room. Flair tried to sneak off to the fringes then realized the gathering was for him.
He was called to the front of the room and presented with a custom leather championship belt like the ones he collects. Two oval side plates painted with the familiar yellow-and-red Bojangles logo flanked a gold center plate emblazoned with the image of a Bojangles Cajun Filet Biscuit. Two words encircled the biscuit: “Bojangles Champ.”
“They said, ‘If you’re going to be the Bojangles Champ, you’ve got to have a belt,’” he recalls.
In the more than two years since, Flair’s relationship with Bojangles has grown. Last month he featured the company’s latest merchandise — including a biscuit-shaped pillow — on his social-media platforms.
“The pillow is the sleeper of the whole deal,” he says without irony. “My buddy’s daughter liked the biscuit pillow so much that I gave it to her. Bojangles did send me another one. My belt sits on top of it.”
Flair can be found wearing one of his outrageous Bojangles suits during appearances.
“I had a Cajun Filet wrap suit made,” he says. “Since they’ve updated their wrapper and logo, they’re funding four more suits for me.”
While he’s anxious to get back to the independent circuit with Raleigh-based Gouge Wrestling promotion, he isn’t looking to wrestle.
“I leave it up to the big boys,” he says. “I went in and trained — honestly it was in a garage in a trailer park with a dirt floor and a wrestling ring — I did an hour and a half and got sick as a dog. I threw up over the rope. I run three miles almost every day of the week and work out five days a week, but that’s a whole different world.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2020 at 4:23 PM.