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This past Tuesday at the United Wrestling Network TV Taping in Irvine, California, Gabbi Tuft, who had formerly wrestled for World Wrestling Entertainment as Tyler Reks, officially returned to the ring. Gabbi sat down with PWInsider.com last night to discuss the experience, her hopes for the future in the pro wrestling space and the decision and journey to transition.
Mike Johnson: As we record this, and it was just about 24 hours ago when former WWE star, Gabbi Tuft, who formerly performed for WWE as Tyler Reks, returned to the ring at the UWN x West coast Pro event in Irvine, California, successful defeating JRod in the main event of the TV taping. Gabbi, obviously, it's been a very eventful couple of days for you. Big profile in the New York Times and then your return to the ring. Obviously you've gone through a lot in your life in the last couple of years. Thanks for sitting down with us. How does it all feel, getting not only that complete circle of everything the last couple of years of your life, but stepping back into the ring for the first time since you transitioned and obviously made so many public appearances showing off your new life?
Gabbi Tuft: Yeah it is amazing. It's just, it's absolutely incredible. It's everything I hoped it would be. I'm coming back with a different style. Knowing who I am at the core has a huge role in the presentation I have as "Mother" and so being so confident in who I am now, it completely translates to the crowd with my new character, my new gimmick. I'm lighter, obviously much lighter, much less muscle mass on my body. So I'm quicker, I'm faster. I'm capable of so much more. And I just, it was such an amazing reaction from the crowd and it was an amazing match. It was just an amazing night overall.
Mike: So you actually began wrestling back in 2007, training at Ultimate Pro Wrestling, which was Rick Bassman's school and promotion. I know Rick Bassman was involved with you getting involved in the match last night. So I have to ask you Rick is such a very unique individual. How has he changed over the many years that you've known him?
Gabbi: Rick, I love Rick. Rick and I have always been friends. We met because my wife's personal training center was very close to his gym. And we started off being kind of business associates. And then it just switched into this incredible friendship. But, honestly, Rick has really remained. He's a phenomenal human being, he's got a great heart, he loves to help people, and he's never judged any of my life decisions. He's just always viewed me for who I am as a human. And I love that about him. And now that I'm, stepping back in, I was telling him about it, and he was just so excited to help, and it was one of Whatever I can do to help, Gabby, you just tell me you're one of my best friends and you've, we've gone through so much together, just tell me how I can help you. So he's just, he's been there from the moment I said I was going to step back in, which I just love about him.
Mike: Was the plan always to return to professional wrestling after you decided to make your transition? Did you at any point think wrestling was going to be in the rear view mirror and you were just going to start a new chapter in your life? Did wrestling just seep back in? I know maybe about six months ago or eight months ago, you were at a WWE event at Madison Square Garden and I know you've done some training, but was it always the plan to step aside, go through your transition and then return to the ring or was it wrestling pulled you back in?
Gabbi: Yeah. So I had no intent on ever going back to wrestling when I retired in 2012. Curt Hawkins talked me into one last mask on the independent circuit is when Pat Buck I had a promotion, he was like, come on back, do one for me. I'm like, okay, I'll do one more. I think that was like 2014. I did a, just a fun match with Hawkins and Lance Archer against Kevin Matthews and Pat Buck, and I'm like, I'm done. Never going back again. I had no intent on ever going back to the ring. And it was the New York Times. They did a piece on me last August, and the reporter Jacob, he said, 'Hey, so I know you go to Manhattan a lot for business. Smackdown's coming to the Garden. Have you been to a show since you retired?' I said no. He said, Can I take you? to grab your reaction. Yeah, no problem. Let's do it. The moment I walked in, cause we have floor seats. The moment I walked in on the floor, A flood of nostalgia hit me, and the energy of the crowd, doors just opened, so we had the crowd energy there. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had no idea how much I actually missed the business until I was there, looking at it in the face again.
Mike: What was it you missed the most about pro wrestling that made you say, I have to get back into this?
Gabbi: Oh God, that's a good question. I think it's a combination of everything that goes with pro wrestling. I think it's the adrenaline. I think it's the dopamine that you get from it, I think it's the rush from the crowd, I think it's knowing that every match is completely different than the last one, and every crowd is completely different than the last crowd, and it's not like it's a big team sport where it's you and 20 other guys on a field somewhere it's you and one other person usually, and it all lies on you, and you are literally dictating what the crowd does, it's at your fingertips. That is, that's a drug in itself. It's such a rush. And it's such a, an amazing electrifying feeling when you get out in front of 5, 10, 000 people, on a weekly basis. It's, I, how could I not want to go back?
Mike: So most wrestlers are usually their own worst critic. How did you feel about the match in the moment, and now that you're 24 hours removed from it, and I'm sure you've replayed it in your brain a bunch of times. How did you feel about the the overall experience and your own performance in the ring?
Gabbi: Yep. Always my worst critic. And here's what I'll say. We tore the effing house down and I was proud of it. Proud of every moment. I I carefully planned that match out. I knew that I had to come back and make a statement. I've been training at Dustin Rhodes facility here in Cedar Park, Texas just outside Austin since January, and I've been making some some weekly practices at AAPW, so I'm in the ring five days a week, and I've been working on my cardio, working on my endurance, I was over at the dungeon with Maddie Neidhart and Tyson Kidd several times, and so I knew we had to go. If I wanted to make a statement, I knew we had to go full speed, and I knew we needed to do a mask that was worthy of a pay per view performance. And when I walked away, I just went behind the stage, and I just looked over, and I'm like, Thank you, guys. We did it and I walked away with my head high, and I was like, We gave them the show of the decade.
Mike: So if I know anything about Rick Bassman, that footage is going to be in the hands of everybody who might be a decision maker in pro wrestling within a week, if not sooner. Rick doesn't, Rick's not a very patient man. So I have to ask obviously there's a long term goal here. You're not coming back just to do independent matches. Is WWE the goal? Maybe AEW? There's a lot of places to wrestle now that are on, pretty, almost national basis, obviously there's places to tour in Japan, do you, if you've got a dream pick up where you'd like to end up in the next year what's the goal for Gabbi?
Gabbi: Both of those companies, AEW and WWE, they have phenomenal talent on both rosters, and I know people on both rosters. I was on the roster with WWE, with a lot of the guys that are in AEW and I was on the roster with some of the guys that are still there at WWE. Amazing talent. And here's what I would say. If I ended up at either company, I'd be happy because there's a stage out there for me to perform on, and no matter if I go left or I go right, and that's not a political statement. Just if I go one company or the next, What I'm bringing is going to be seen, and the world will see it. So really, I don't want to say too much or give too much away, but I do want to say I'm destined for that big stage.
Mike: So there are other talents who are trans, but you are probably going to be the most high profile one to date given you had a long run in WWE before transitioning. My path in life, a a straight man, would be very different from yours or anybody else in the LGBTQ+ community, so my question is what is that like knowing that you're about to make the public declaration that you've transitioned, knowing that it's going to bring a lot of attention to you, good and bad? I know not everyone's path in life is the same, but what advice would you give to others who are perhaps thinking about transitioning or coming out and being more public about who they are and being more at ease with themselves publicly, as it's obviously not an easy decision for anyone to make. So I was curious what that experience was like for you and what advice you might be able to give to someone else who's walking that path.
Gabbi: Yeah, I think it's really important to first say that, pro wrestling is not a sport, per se. It's not a competitive sport, and I feel very comfortable knowing that it's sports entertainment or athletic entertainment, as we call it. So the fact that my first match back was against Jessica Roten, a female. A lot of people are going to look at that and say that was unfair. You're a biological man and you transition. If you look at her and I have a ton of muscle mass compared to her, but we work together in the ring for the common cause of entertaining a crowd, and I'm honored to be able to do that. We're both very...she's a great worker. I consider myself a very safe worker. I do everything in my power to protect the person that I'm in there with. I would rather get hurt first before my opponent gets hurt. Let's put it that way, and so I think that's one of the biggest things I want to bring across when we talk about my transition and who I work with on whatever roster, whatever show, it's protecting the other person and the goal is to give them the show of their life or the show of the week or whatever it might be, but I really believe, I truly believe that I can just bring an element specifically to the women's roster that gives all of the top girls someone to work with and program. That will draw massive amounts of interest. I'm bringing a whole new audience to, I'm not just bringing the existing wrestling audience. I'm bringing hundreds of millions of years from Instagram X all following me for everything I've done over, over the last five, 10 years, and now they're transitioning into wrestling. So, I'm bringing something new to the table there.
As far as the decision to transition now, it is not an easy one, and I would caution anybody about not just jumping into it because it's a lifelong decision. You have to be absolutely certain that this is what you want, what you were meant to do, because once you start, you can't go back. You can de-transition but it's an even rougher road than transitioning. It's not easy. I'm not going to sugarcoat it and say it's a bunch of puppy dogs and rainbows, because it's not. It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. It's made me question who I am to the core. It's been difficult being in the public eye and transitioning because you're under a microscope, but I learned to stop caring about what other people think. When I did that, it set me free. I wanted to stop caring about what people thought about me or what my mom might say or my dad might say, or the person on the other end of the cash register that's taking my order. I was free.
So, if there's any advice I can give to somebody that's in a similar situation, stop caring about what other people think if you're going to do it.
Mike: You were in the ring with a ton of major WWE talents from the Undertaker on down. So I have to ask you if we gotta pick just a one or two favorite memories, what are the moments that define that first run for you in pro wrestling that mean the most to you?
Gabbi: Oh my God, yeah! It was definitely the elimination of Kaval [Low Ki] on SmackDown to put me into the Bragging Rights pay-per-view. It came out of nowhere. It was just like a total left field. I'd been doing dark matches for six months. I showed up on a Tuesday to call me to TV like usual. I'm just not expecting to do anything but a dark match, if that, and Arn Anderson comes to me and he's Hey, Rex you're on the show tonight. I'm like, ''okay, cool, who am I dark with tonight?'
He's, No, you're on the show.' I'm like, oh, and he goes, 'and you're in the pay per view.' I'm like, whoa! It took me from just being in a dark match to eliminating Kaval and then being in bragging rights with the entire Smackdown roster with Alberto Del Rio and John Morrison, Miz, Cena, Big Show, Rey...like it was just incredible stacked roster for that pay per view. So, it was probably one of my most memorable moments for me personally, just being tossed out there. It's like sink or swim and I swam. It was absolutely amazing. There was that.
Then there was, like you mentioned, there was Rawl 1000 with The Undertaker and Kane. That was on the bucket list. I grew up watching Taker. He used to give me nightmares. He'd roll his eyes back at his head, and I'd cower behind my parents. 'I don't know if I can watch this, Dad.' It was really cool to be a part of the, I guess you'd call them shenanigans that went down. Yeah. It was quite a moment.
Mike: When you look at preparing again for professional wrestling now versus the original experience of, UPW and FCW and even NXT, which was streaming. It wasn't as high profile as it is now. How different or how similar was the experience of getting back in the ring, having gone through the transition and prepping your body and callousing it for the ring and getting that muscle memory going again versus that initial learning experience of figuring out the puzzle that is professional wrestling?
Gabbi: Oh my God, it's much different. My first time through, I had all that muscle mass to protect me, a lot of testosterone in my system, and it's your very thick skin, literally, a guy's skin is so much thicker than a female skin because of hormones. And I was on a fast track because I hadn't wrestled before I got to the UPW, and even then it was like once a week until I got signed for about eight months. Then I was at FCW, where I just got thrown in the fire and I had to learn as fast as I could. So for me, I was learning more of the technical aspect and not as much of the character aspect.
So now when I came back, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I knew, one, I had to get my endurance up. I knew I was gonna have to torture myself in the ring, literally, to do that. Two, I needed to study. I needed to study products from both AEW and WWE, what the products had progressed to, who the top talents were, what everybody was doing. Then, I needed to do some history homework. I had to go back and watch some old matches and see what people had forgotten and what the difference was.
Finally, I had to develop my character. I knew that I could work. I knew that once I was in that ring bumping around and I was getting my endurance up, Everybody can do that to a certain point. Now, who am I? How would I pull emotion from the crowd? How would I get people on the edge of their seat beyond just those technicalities in the ring. It had to be a character. It had to be something that would pull at emotion and draw them in at the edge of their seat, just wanting, craving more. And that's how I came up with 'Mother." So it was much different. It's my dime. This time it's me flying myself to the Dungeon to train on my dime. It's me running a business and then taking every extra moment to watch footage and get my butt in the ring and know that I have to do something new and learn something new every time I'm in that ring. Until it's crisp, until it's perfect.
Mike: Last night you returned to the ring. How do you compare the the nervousness and the butterflies to working a RAW or a WWE pay per view for the first time?
Gabbi: Surprisingly similar. God, here's the interesting part. I had never worked in independent show before I got signed to WWE. So my first shows were at FCW, Florida Championship Wrestling in the developmental territory. And just knowing where this was heading, knowing that this moment was my showcase. This was like my WrestleMania. It was my showcase of my character, my showcase of my gear, of my promo gear. of the entire gimmick of everything that I've been planning for close to a year and I had one shot to get out there and show the world exactly what I could do. That's a lot of pressure. And then there were a ton of butterflies in my stomach. I would say it is about, or it was about the equivalent of getting ready to go out for a pay per view because I was mainly, I was main event. We had a 10 minute promo segment three to set everything up, to pull emotion out of the crowd, to get them to hate me. At first they loved me. I had to turn them. Then, they finally hated me. Then I had a 19 minute match with J Rod. 19 minutes. That's pay per viewing. To hear the crowd chant 'This is awesome' during the comeback, I was like, we did what we came to do. This is amazing.
Mike: Before we go, I want to give you the chance to speak to the audience that supported you as Tyler and now is supporting you as Gabbi, and let them know where they can track you down to continue to follow your adventures as you build up to your next match and your future appearances?
Gabbi: Thank you, and I appreciate that. So to everyone following along that's been following, just a monstrous, massive thank you for the overwhelming support, because it has been 99 percent positive, and to see as I call them now, my children just, Coming to life supporting me on all platforms, all the social media is absolutely incredible. The crowd last night was incredible. To everybody that wanted photos afterwards, thank you. Massive thank you to everybody that supported me that's still on the roster, was on the roster. Guys like Fandango, Drew McIntyre, Usos, Paige, Nyla, Archer, Taya Valkyrie. I could go on forever. The names are just...there's so many, Saraya has been wonderful, probably one of my biggest supporters since day one Bunny Deford as well, just a huge supporter, thank you babe, and then for everybody else that's wanting to follow along, all of my handles are GabbiTuft on TikTok, on Instagram, and on X, so make sure you're following, we are going to be releasing footage of the match very soon. We're compiling everything in a specific order for a specific reason. So I just know this is only the beginning of Mother's story.
For more on Gabbi Tuft, visit Instagram.com/GabbiTuft.
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