In an interview with Sportskeeda.com, Bianca Belair talked about the development of her hair whipping gimmick:
“Initially I was just wearing the hair just to really stand out. I was trying to figure out who Bianca Belair was and what I wanted to look like and represent. I was debating between this long braid or just wearing my hair long and flowy because I saw other girls wearing their hair like that. I thought they looked so pretty and I wanted to do the same.
My husband, Montez Ford, was the one who encouraged me to wear the braid because when I first came in, I was very new to the business, new to WWE, and new to wrestling. He explained to me that you want to stand out and be unique. He told me to ‘Look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite. Nobody else is wearing that long braid, and if anybody comes to a show for the first time, even if they don’t remember your name, they’ll remember the girl with the braid.’ I wore it at first as a signature look. I was in the ring one day and my coach, Sarah D’Amato was like, ‘If you’re going to wear that long braid, you might want to figure out how you can use it to your advantage, otherwise it’s going to be used to your disadvantage.’
I had a match one time in California, actually my first NXT road loop match, live event match, and I threw my braid at my opponent. I did it because I thought it might look cool as a move, and it made this huge noise, and the crowd went crazy. We looked at each other in the ring like, ‘What was that?’ I said, ‘I think that was my hair.’ Ever since then it’s been a thing, like, oh, I can use this thing now to my advantage. My rule now is if you don’t touch my hair, I won’t use it, so it’s always warranted, but I want to figure out more ways to use it, like tripping a girl. I want to come off the top rope one day and hit a girl if she touches my hair too much. I want to do some cool things in the future with it.”
