Before her huge win at the 2021 Royal Rumble, and her subsequent rise in WWE, Bianca Belair found herself immersed in an interesting series of events with former SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley.
Throughout the months of December 2020, and January 2021, Bianca Belair and Bayley battled back and forth, trading wins in singles competition. Amidst their initial rivalry, Bayley challenged Belair to tackle an “Ultimate Athlete Obstacle Course.” As a former track-and-field athlete, Belair breezed through the course, beating Bayley’s time by 17 seconds. Through her trial, though, Belair was faced with an extra challenge: lifting the 300+ pound WWE Superstar, Otis.
Former WWE writer Chris Dunn recently revealed that he pitched the original obstacle course concept as a way to “show off” all of Belair’s athletic capabilities.
“We finally got it to the production meeting and then like luckily, Adam Pearce and Daniel Bryan got like heavily involved,” Dunn told the Public Enemies Podcast. “I didn’t produce or write it, [but] I pitched it. I was around helping. Jen Pepperman, who’s brilliant with a women’s division, she handled producing it, but Daniel Bryan and Adam Pearce jumped in and they added elements to make it bigger. I forget which one of them came up with the idea of lifting Otis. Then the other one double down of like, ‘okay, you [lift Chad] Gable, but then you do Otis to build it. It really blew Vince [McMahon] away.”
While the original plan called for Charlotte Flair to win the 2021 Royal Rumble later that month, Dunn revealed that he also looked into the next course of action for Belair after her feud with Bayley. “I got looking into putting a tag team together with her and Billie Kay,” he said. “I thought we can kind of do like a modern Rock ‘N’ Sock Connection with them. It would’ve been awesome.”
The Rock N’ Sock Connection, of course, featured one of the most unique partner combinations in WWE history — The Rock and Mick Foley. At the time, Billie Kay was on a quest to find her place in WWE locker room, often handing out her resume and headshot to fellow superstars. That January, she attempted to infiltrate the Riott Squad, but failed in her attempts.
Bianca Belair, on the other hand, would go on to win the 2021 Women’s Royal Rumble, thanks to a last-minute call from Vince McMahon, and writer, Ryan Ward, and subsequently alter her creative path.
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