Posted on 7/29/125 by Colin Vassallo
Bianca Belair sat 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!
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, 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, but 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. She’s like, ‘Bianca, Bianca!’ And I’m like, ‘What?’
Oh, we have to finish this match.”
On the hair braid becoming part of her character:
“So I was, again, I was trying to figure out 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 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 two, 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 it
won’t make a noise. 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 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.”