Exclusive: Gabbi Tuft (Fka Tyler Reks) Clears Up Misconceptions About Her Gender Transition

Former WWE Superstar Gabbi Tuft (fka Tyler Reks) was on The Wrestling Inc. Daily podcast where she sat down with Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman after she came out as trans. She described her coming out story as a prison sentence that has concluded and opened up about the life and death situation she found herself in.

"I'm very very happy. I feel like I have a prison sentence that just [ended], and I'm free," Tuft described. "It feels absolutely amazing. It's something that I've been hiding for years, and it's gotten to the point where I just couldn't hold it inside anymore.

"It was life and death for me at one point where I didn't want to live another day as a man, and I was ready to end everything. Even though I have a wonderful wife and a daughter, the pain of just presenting as a man was overwhelming, and so when I decided to make the change and start the transition, everything just opened up. It was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders."

Gabbi then opened up about her story in detail. She said that she would dress up as Gabbi in the evenings but stopped after her wife told her about how hard it was to see her live a double life.

"This was probably August-ish last year in 2020," Gabbi said. "Priscilla (her wife) had come to me. She'd seen me becoming very depressed, and over the summer, I had been getting dressed up a lot as Gabbi in the evenings when my daughter would go to sleep. And one day Priscilla came to me, and she was like, 'Hey babe, I know this is you, but I'm having a really difficult time in the day time because I still see you dressed up as a woman at night.' And I took that immediately.

"Being a kind of an extremist, I said, 'Okay, no problem. Gabbi's gone. Don't worry about it,' and she was like, 'No, no, that's not what I mean.' I'm like, 'No, no, this is stupid. This is dumb. This is some dumb thing I'm going through. It's a phase,' and so I just basically killed it off, but it became very very painful, extremely painful to the point where — I've come out telling everybody that I did steroids for years.

"And my thing was as soon as Priscilla said that, I ran to the bathroom, and I grabbed my gear and I shot up a bunch of Test (testosterone) and Tren (trenbolone) right away to go the most opposite way that I could from Gabbi. And I remember loading the syringe and pushing the syringe into my shoulder, and as I did, I just felt like I was killing Gabbi. And I could just feel the light going out, and it was painful, but I thought I was over it."

Gabbi continued opening up about how everyday was difficult for her. She said she had to live as Gabbi or not live at all, and she opened up about her suicidal thoughts at the time.

"And so the next couple weeks, I would walk into my closet, and I'd see my wigs and my clothes and I'd just kind of turn away like no, no, no," Gabbi recalled. "But everyday, it got harder and harder to look away, and I found myself one day, I literally stopped and looked at one of my favorite wigs, and I reached out with my hand. And I just kind of touched it, and I felt it. And I had this moment where I realized — well first of all, I realized that Gabe and Gabbi weren't two people. They were one.

"This was a part of me, and it wasn't going away. And I hadn't killed that part of me, and it was at that moment I knew it was either I needed to live as Gabbi, or I didn't want to live anymore. And so I had some dark nights, very dark nights. I'm a gun enthusiast, and I had nights where I was just picturing putting the gun to my head and pulling the trigger because the pain was just, it was overwhelming and it's crazy. Like I said, I've got a wife and a daughter, and as much as I wanted to be there for both of them, it was just — I've never been suicidal my whole life. My brother committed suicide in 2013.

"So I know the pain of losing a family member to suicide, but I just couldn't go on. And one day, Priscilla comes to me, and she says, 'Babe, do you have something you want to talk to me about? This is a safe place,' and I just knew it was now or never. So I told her, 'Sweetheart, if I can't live the rest of my life as a woman, I don't want to live anymore.' And she looks at me, and she says, 'Baby, I know. It's okay. I love you. Things are going to change, but we'll figure it out,' and it was at that moment that this incredible weight was lifted off my shoulders and I knew I was free to be me."

After Hausman thanked Gabbi for being so open about her story, she noted that she wants to be as transparent as possible. She points out that there are people going through the same things she has gone through, and she admits that she is lucky that she has a wife, family and friends that are supporting her unlike many others that do not.

"I'm trying to be as transparent as possible," Gabbi admitted. "I think that in this journey, if everybody is going to know about it, I need to be as transparent as humanly possible because I know there's other people that are going through the same thing that I go through, or I went through or I'm going through, but they don't have anyone to support them like my wife.

"She fully supports everything. My family supports. My closest friends have been supporting me since the beginning, but I know there's people that don't have that. So if I am just able to share my deepest, most personal feelings, I just hope that it will help somebody out."

Hausman also gave Gabbi the time to dispel some misconceptions about her transition.

"I think that there's a lot of misconceptions where people go, 'oh, okay, he's now transitioning to a female, so he's automatically gay,' which I'm not. I'm still very straight," Gabbi stated. "I'm very attracted to females. I'm very attracted to my wife, and so that is something that I think a lot of, especially males, they get a little apprehensive.

"Actually, I've got a neighbor, who's a great friend. I'm not going to mention his name, but I had a talk with him last night. He came over wanting to talk to me like, 'Hey, I know we're t-minus one day until everything goes viral. I just wanted to talk to you. So what about guys,' and I told him. 'Well, that helps because I just instantly assumed that you were gonna be looking for men now.' I know that's a common thing.

"The other thing is people, I've already seen today on Instagram and Facebook, where people are like, 'Hey, you should get this mental illness checked out, or you probably have a chemical imbalance.' And I'm here to say I don't. I'm happier than I've ever been. I know exactly who I am. I'm elated to be starting my transition. I'm 4 months into hormones, and I feel amazing. Life has never made so much sense."

Gabbi then said that when she started her transition process, she looked back at her childhood and recalled moments in her life where she would do things that were deemed things boys shouldn't do. She noted that she grew up in a time where if a boy acted like or dressed like a girl, they would get beat up or called names, so she admitted to hiding aspects of herself in public.

"When I decided that I was going to start my transition, I started thinking back to when I was a child, and I started putting puzzle pieces together," Gabbi said. "When I was four, I have this memory of shoving toys up my shirt to pretend I was pregnant. And my mom comes in, and she's like, 'Oh, sweetie. What are you doing?' 'Oh, I'm pregnant.'

"My parents are both fantastic. They did nothing wrong, but she goes, 'Oh sweetie, girls are the ones that get pregnant. Boys don't.' Oh, okay. And then at 10-ish, around then until I was 14, when my parents and my brother were out of the house, I would sneak into my mom's closet and try on her clothes. And it was this really secret thing I did. I never wanted to get caught because I didn't want to get in trouble, and at that point in school, in society, boys that wear girl clothes or boys that do girl things, they get beat up.

"They get called names, and so I battled with that. In my teenage years, I let it go, but it was always there in the back of my head going, 'I wonder what it's like to have breasts. I wonder what it's like to be on the other side of things,' and I hid it really well most of my life, but it came back about three years ago in full force."

For more information about Gabbi's "Body Spartan" fitness app please visit www.BodySpartan.com

Tuft's full interview aired as part of today's episode of our podcast, The Wrestling Inc. Daily. Subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as it's released Monday – Friday afternoon by clicking here. You can find the full audio from today's show, as well as the video from Nick's interview with Tuft, below.