Bianca Belair: Injury Update, CRAZY Hair Whips, Naomi's Heel Turn, WrestleMania Magic, Montez Ford
https://cvvtix.com - Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in NYC with VIP Meet & Greet! Bianca Belair (@BiancaBelairWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss her journey to WWE after being discovered by Mark Henry, becoming the EST of NXT and then WWE, the origin of the hair whip attack, her WrestleMania matches against Sasha Banks in 2021 and against Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY in 2025, the Scary Movie fight with Alexa Bliss, and more!
https://cvvtix.com - Get your tickets for INSIGHT LIVE in NYC with VIP Meet & Greet!
Bianca Belair (@BiancaBelairWWE) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Los Angeles, CA to discuss her journey to WWE after being discovered by Mark Henry, becoming the EST of NXT and then WWE, the origin of the hair whip attack, her WrestleMania matches against Sasha Banks in 2021 and against Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY in 2025, the Scary Movie fight with Alexa Bliss, and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "What we fear most is usually what we most need to do." - Tim Ferriss
On the fan reaction to the WrestleMania 41 triple threat:
"That makes me so happy to hear. So I've actually only watched the match back once, and it's only because my husband forced me to watch it. A lot of times if I have a really good match and it goes well, and it goes great, I don't want to watch it back because I know I'm going to pick it apart. So I was like, just give me a few days, let me just live in the moment and let me just be happy about it. I was like, I don't want to watch, he's like, 'You have to watch it.' So we were sitting at home, he put it on, and I watched it, and I enjoyed it. I didn't pick it apart, but I’ll probably never watch it again, because it just takes way too much out of me, because I get nervous when I watch it again. I feel all the emotions again, By the end of watching, I just feel so exhausted. So I'm like, okay, one and done, and I'm happy with that."
On when she felt like there was magic there:
"I just feel like I was just such in the moment. I do feel like it was the moment with me and Rhea, where we're going back and forth with each other and all the emotions from the storyline that we had. I'm just like, hitting her and telling her I belong here, you don't, I work harder than you. Then it's like a moment in the match where my facial expressions, I'm just looking at her, and my hair is in my face, and that's when I knew. I could just feel the emotions and us going back and forth. Then once we got to the finish, I was excited for that, because I was like we got them, we got the crowd, we got them."
On her broken finger:
"It looks more like a real finger now. So I have to wear my ring finger on my right hand now because my ring doesn't fit. It's healed, it won't fully straighten. I broke it in two or three different spots. I broke it up here in the middle and then down in the joint."
On when the broken finger happened:
"So it was when we were doing the triple German spot, when IYO was on the top rope, and then it was Rhea, then it was me, and I came in German suplexed both of them off, and my hand got stuck underneath Rhea. Also I went to the wrong side of Rhea, but my hand, I thought she was gonna go further over me, we kind of just collapsed together. So when my hand went back, it got stuck under her, and she literally crashed on my hand. I knew immediately it was broken, because usually in a match, something happens, and you don't feel it until after the match, your adrenaline wears off, and you're like, Ow, my finger. But in the moment I thought I broke all my fingers. So the ref, you can see the ref if you watch back, the ref comes to me. He's like, 'Are you okay?' I'm like, 'I just broke all of my fingers!' You just see me rolling around on the ground, and it took Rhea to snap me out of the moment, because I was just rolling around on the ground. And she's like, 'Bianca, Bianca!' And I'm like, 'What?' Oh, we have to finish this match."
How'd you finish it?
"Honestly, after she snapped me back into I didn't feel it at all for the rest of the match. I didn't feel it until I got to the back and I was like, Oh, I broke my finger, and I didn't think it was that serious."
On WrestleMania 37:
"Man, that was a crazy WrestleMania. For one it was like my rookie year. And not only am I at WrestleMania, I'm main eventing WrestleMania. It was a lot of pressure but Sasha took such good care of me. I felt so comfortable in the match with her. But that was a special one. We didn't know we were main eventing until the day before. We kind of found out the same time as everybody else, when it was announced online. And then that day came, and it was rain. It was like a storm, and they had to postpone it. We didn't even know if we were going to be able to have WrestleMania that day. And then I remember, before we went out, they were saying, 'Well, if lightning strikes, you guys have to just stop in the middle of the match, and then we'll bring you back, and then we'll come back and you'll finish the match.' And we looked at each other, and we're like, 'No. I don't know what to tell you, but we're not stopping.' There's no way, there's no way you can stop that magic and restart it. So thankfully it didn’t lightning, but it was raining, and it was the one match where I pressed Sasha and walked up the stairs, and I was so nervous about that, because I was scared I was going to slip and fall, but that match was magic, and people don't even know that we had never touched before that match. We had never had a match together. We had never wrestled each other. Literally watching that match of like, bread and butter. Everything went perfectly."
On originally wanting to be an Olympian:
"Yes, that was the goal. I grinded so much in high school, I was like, I wanted a scholarship. I want to go to college. I'm gonna be an Olympian, that was my dream. I would wake up every single morning in high school. I would do 1000 abs every single day, and 500 push-ups every single morning. So people thought I was lifting weights in high school, and it's like, no, I'm just training. I was doing two days, I wanted to be an Olympic track athlete."
On how things would have looked if Mark Henry didn’t get in contact:
"I don't know. That's what's scary to me, and it's crazy. I always tell I talk about to my mom about this. I had the thought of being a wrestler, right? And I just kind of threw it away. But I needed somebody else's validation, or somebody else to push me towards it. But it scares me to think that, what if he didn't? But I had that inkling. So sometimes that's a lesson to listen to your gut, because sometimes you might not have that Mark here in your life. You have to be your own Mark Henry, so go for something, because you might miss out on an opportunity if you're waiting for somebody else's validation. Thank God I had a Mark Henry to see that in me and push me to this."
On becoming The EST:
"So I was in NXT. I remember Mark Henry. He came down to the Performance Center and we were having a talk. It was before I knew what I wanted to be. He's asking me all these questions that I didn't really understand at the time. He's like, 'What do you want to be? What do you want to represent? What do you want your character to be?' I'm like, I don't know. He's like, 'Well, you need something that when somebody sees you, they know exactly who you are, what you're about, before you even open your mouth to talk, before you even do anything. Everything has to make sense, from your gear to the way you present yourself, to your wrestling moves, everything has to make sense, and it has to be simple enough to make sense.' So I was like, 'Well, I don't know, because I feel like I'm not just one thing. I'm a lot of things. I'm not just someone who does strong, powerful moves, I'm not just strong, but I'm the best at that. I'm the strongest, but I'm also this, and I'm also this.' And he's like, 'You have to simplify it.' I'm like, 'How do I simplify this? I'm just the best at everything. I can't just put myself in a box. I'm the strongest, I'm the fastest, I'm the roughest, I'm the toughest, I'm the quickest, I'm the greatest, I'm the best.' Whoa, wait, all those things in an EST. Oh, so I'm the EST of everything. So it really all just came together in this one promo that I had on a coconut show. I was just kind of rambling, and it all just came together and it stuck. And so I just became the EST of NXT, now EST of WWE."
On the hair braid becoming part of her character:
"So I was, again, I was trying to figure out, like, what do I want to look like? I want to have a unique look. And I was looking at all the girls that were there. They would wear their hair down. It was beautiful. I want to wear my hair down, I want to feel beautiful and I just loved how all the girls were, glamorous. But I wore a braid one time, and my husband, he was like, 'That’s your thing. You have to stick with it.' He's like, 'You have to keep the braid.' I'm like, 'I don't know. I feel like, sometimes I feel like I look better with the long hair.' He's like, 'But everybody does that. The best way to stand out here is to do something that nobody else is doing. Look at what everybody else is doing, and if that works for them, go the complete opposite way. The first time somebody comes to a show, they might not remember your name for the first time, but they'll remember the girl with the braid.' And I was like, All right, I'm the girl with the braid."
On the hair whip:
"Yeah, a lot of people think that production adds a special effect to it, no [there’s no sound effect]. And every time that I do it, it's loud. I thought Sasha was the loudest. And then when I hit Becky, it surprises me. I'm like, Oh, that sounds like that hurt. Sorry. You know, every time it gets louder and louder. [The welt it leaves is crazy]. So that's why I don't do it a lot too. For one, I don't want the audience to get used to it, and I don't want to just mark up people."
On how to get the noise:
"It’s a special way that I braid it, and I can whip it in the air. This is my appearance one, it’s not braided. So when I braid a certain way, if I can hear the way that it goes in the wind, I can tell if it's a hair whip braid. I'm like, Yep, that's it. We're good."
On whether she gets nervous before a match:
"I actually get more nervous refereeing than wrestling. So when I was a special guest referee for the Rhea and IYO match, I would have rather done a WrestleMania main event than special guest referee."
Why does that make you more nervous?
"Because I'm out of my element and it's so many things that you don't realize that referees do. So when they're doing the championship introductions, and I have to stand in the middle and hold the title up, I'm usually the person that is on either side. So I'm like, Oh, we didn't talk about this, how do I do this? Do I grab the title? Do I hold it? Who do I give it to? And then the referee is such an invisible part of the match, in a way, until it's not when it matters the most. A referee can really mess up a match, if you don't get the three count right, and if you're in the way when they're trying to do something in the corner, and I also was doing stuff in the match. I was a part of it, and I was just like I am stressed! I am so stressed. I do not want to mess this match up because it's not my match. I'm not in the match, but I am in the match. You can mess up the finish."
On being in the Elimination Chamber pod when Jade Cargill attacked Naomi:
"I just try to pull from just experiences that we had as Tag Team Champions, even with Naomi. Naomi and I, we were always friends before we were in a tag team. But when we got into a tag team, I feel like I just got so much more closer to her, I've learned so much from her inside and outside the ring. So it's like in my heart, that's my best friend. Then me and Jade, we were able to be a tag team, and we're able to be Tag Team Champions, and put the division on the map, and do the things that we wanted to do. And just being in this position, I just try to see it as I'm literally watching my best friend get beat up. Then I just try to just hone into that and like this is awful. You have your two best friends fighting each other, and I'd really just try to, I don't know, just tap into that and just pull the realism out of it."
On the follow-up promo with Naomi:
"We have amazing chemistry. I can look at Naomi, it just felt so emotional. For one, when we were a tag team and us not being able to have that long run. When I was in NXT, Naomi was on the main roster, pitching for us to be a tag team from the very beginning, and that was something that was always wanted, and we finally got to have it and then it was, like, cut short. So that was emotional for me, too. And then, you know, just the realism in her promo and us being able to just hone in and click. Before we did that promo Hunter came up to us and he said, you guys are in there. This is just a conversation between you two. And just look at it that way. So I think for us, we wanted it to be something where everybody felt like they were listening to a conversation that they really weren't supposed to be listening to. A lot of times you do promos and you're kind of talking to the crowd, and you open up to the crowd. Never once, it was just me and her locked in. It really felt like you were watching a conversation and listening to a conversation you weren't supposed to be listening to, and we were able to just lock in together and bring that emotion. A lot of it was real."
On the Scary Movie fight sequence with Alexa Bliss:
"I still get tagged all the time. We were having our match, and at the time, her character, my character, it really resembled the two characters in Scary Movie. I forgot who figured it out it, I can't remember exactly like, who came up with it, but it started out as a joke, and they were like, Wait, we could do this. We totally could do this. So we really didn't even know if anybody would catch on to it. And right away, people caught on to it."
On the Montez Ford frog splash:
"You know he's scared of heights. He's scared of heights. You ask him yourself, but every time he comes to the top rope, he's scared. I always make fun of him, because he takes forever. Most people, they put their foot on the second rope, and then they go straight to the top. He goes, it's like, right, left. He's like, bottom, bottom, middle, middle, top, top, and then he's up. I'm like, why are you taking so many steps? Just take one step and get up. He's like, I'm scared. But yeah, I think his goal is to get out of the frame. He wants to be king of the Frog Splash. He wants the best Frog Splash in the business. Nobody can top him, he has the best frog splash."
What is Bianca Belair grateful for?
"Family, health and my career."
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