WWE is doing the right thing holding off on Bianca Belair’s RR decision

By virtue of winning the 2021 women’s Royal Rumble, Bianca Belair has earned the right to challenge for the women’s championship of her choice at WrestleMania 37. Though most fans assume Belair will choose SmackDown Women’s Champion Sasha Banks as her opponent, WWE has chosen to take the slow and steady route when it comes to Belair’s final decision.

On the Feb. 5 episode of SmackDown, Kayla Braxton tried to pry an answer out of Belair in a backstage interview to no avail. Later in the show, Belair stood in the ring and pondered whether she should face Banks or Raw Women’s Champion Asuka (Io Shirai, the NXT Women’s Champion, was not mentioned) before Carmella and her sommelier Reginald interrupted her.

The segment, which also included Banks and ended with Belair whipping Reginald with her braided ponytail, planted the seeds for a Banks/Belair match — while also teasing a Belair/Carmella encounter for the near future — but Belair made no official announcement for WrestleMania.

And you know what? That’s perfectly fine.

WWE is being smart having Belair wait a bit before announcing her WrestleMania opponent.

Again, we know that Belair choosing to wrestle Banks is the final destination, but it makes sense in kayfabe that Belair would want to take her time before making such a career-altering decision following the biggest win of her young career. Having Belair mentally oscillate between wanting to face Banks and Asuka in the interim emphasizes the gravity of the choice.

Think of any moment in your life where you needed to make a choice that could impact you’re future. Even if the choice seemed obvious, you probably still took some time to consider how it would affect you and others. Decisions like that are hard, so it’s not outlandish to believe that a young ascending star would want to take her time before coming to the conclusion she feels comfortable with.

Belair choosing to wait a little while also accomplishes something that WWE often struggles with whenever they enact a brand split: making the respective championships on each show feel equal to one another.

“The EST of WWE” didn’t pull what John Cena did in 2013 when after his Rumble win, he said that challenging for the other show’s world title would be “the easy way out” before announcing that he would face The Rock.

She made sure to respectively put over Banks and Asuka as unique and challenging opponents, and having her seriously consider going after either belt shows that BOTH belts are prizes worth going after (this will also help whoever goes after Asuka’s title when Belair inevitably picks Banks).

And let’s face it: if Belair announced her intentions to fight Banks at Mania, would you really trust WWE to build to that match without any hiccups between now and April. We saw how this movie played out with the Becky Lynch/Ronda Rousey build, which became the Becky Lynch/Ronda Rousey/Charlotte build (which kind of tells you everything you need to know about how that went). Same with the lead-up to the AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura dream match, which saw WWE make fans less excited about it week-by-week until WrestleMania 34 came.

Giving Vince McMahon and his creative team more time to hype a match simply gives them more of an excuse to add some unnecessary nonsense to “stretch the feud out” and as much as people disliked that strategy in those aforementioned instances, those same folks would LOATHE it if applied to Banks vs. Belair.

So, for now, kudos to WWE for not rushing into this. We already know it’s coming, so there’s no need for them to do anything other than to take their time with this.