WWE star Bianca Belair recently spoke to Ryan Satin of FOX Sports to talk all things pro-wrestling, including how her character vignettes were inspired by pro-wrestling legend, Mr. Perfect. Highlights from the interview can be found belwo.
On making her EST vignettes and how much fun they were to make:
“The Mr. Perfect style vignettes, I’ve been wanting to do something like that since NXT. I might not always be able to show when I’m in inside the ring what my character is about and introduce it to the bigger audience on Raw and SmackDown. But I had a lot of fun making those. I had a really weird moment when I was on the track making the track vignette, because I didn’t grow up watching wrestling. So, to the people that are in the business now that grew up watching wrestling, track was my wrestling. If that makes sense. I’ve been running track since I was five. I could name down every single Olympian that ran hurdles. I could tell you all my role models growing up. I wanted to be an Olympian. That was my world. Then I came into wrestling, and now wrestling is my world.
How wrestling legend Mr. Perfect was an inspiration:
“Mr. Perfect was the inspiration for the different vignettes and just trying to show other things outside of wrestling. Like I said, I wanted to show stuff you wouldn’t normally see inside the wrestling ring. So, that was the inspiration. The hard part was just picking three and narrowing it down, because we had so many other different ideas that I wanted to do. But we just had to pick three and that was the hard part, like, which three are we gonna pick?! So, we came out with the strongEST, the fastEST and the smartEST.”
Pitching the idea to Chairman Vince McMahon
“It wasn’t nerve-wracking. I just looked at it as I’m my biggest cheerleader and if I’m not gonna cheer for myself, who is? Of course, he’s Vince McMahon. He’s the head guy in charge. So, you know, you gotta come correct. That was my thing. You just gotta come correct. That was the nerve-wracking part for me. Just come correct and just be who you are. And if it’s a good pitch, it’s a good pitch. If it isn’t, I’ll just go back to the drawing board and let’s see where we go from here. I feel like you can’t get anywhere if you’re going to be scared. As long as you’re being assertive and respectable, and you’re just being your biggest cheerleader, nobody can fault you for that.