Bianca Belair Was Inspired by Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig
In a recent interview with Ryan Satin of FOX Sports, Bianca Belair discussed Mr. Perfect being the inspiration behind her EST vignettes on RAW, pitching the idea to Vince McMahon, and much more. Here are some of the highlights:
Bianca Belair on the idea behind her EST vignettes: “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.
“When I ran track, I couldn’t see myself doing anything other than running track. Now I’m in wrestling, and I can’t see myself doing anything other than wrestling, because I’ve completely fallen in love with what I do in this business. When I got on the track, the smell of the track, the feel of the track on my feet, it all came back to me … but it felt so foreign. It felt like, “Wow. This used to be my world! And now it isn’t. Now wrestling is my world. So I had this weird moment of, like, this is kinda crazy! This is how I’m absorbed into wrestling to where now something that used to be my life feels so foreign to me. But it was fun. I was so sore after the vignette on the track because I was out there like sprinting and running. The next day I’m like, “Oh gosh. I’m using muscles I haven’t used in awhile.”
On Mr. Perfect being the inspiration behind the vignettes: “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.”
On pitching the idea to 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.
