In an exclusive for WrestlingNews.co, Steve Fall interviewed Gabbi Tuft (former WWE star Tyler Reks). Tuft signed a developmental contract in 2008 and debuted on WWE’s ECW brand in 2009. Tuft left the company in 2012. Click below for the full interview.
Gabbi Tuft on John Laurinaitis
“He was always cool to me. Like, honestly, when my daughter was about to be born, I was in Europe on the SmackDown tour on the due date and I’m freaking out, freaking out, freaking out, and Johnny’s like, get through this one thing and we’ll send you home.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t finish the whole tour, but I was freaking out. I’m like, ‘I gotta go home.’ He’s like, ‘Go, go, go.’ Not only did he send me home after Mia was born, he’s like, ‘Take two weeks off.’ I was like, ‘What?’ Nobody gets that. ‘Well, take two weeks off.’ So he gave me two weeks off to be with my wife and my new daughter. So he was pretty cool. I’ve been on the receiving end of the bad side too. I’ve seen both sides of Johnny. When there was the whole airplane incident in Wisconsin, he was not nice to me.”
Gabbi Tuft on why she quit WWE
“Hunter had just kind of stepped in as the head of the creative department and he was taking over, it was talent development. I don’t know if they still have the talent development department, so to speak, but Hunter had just taken that over. It was his baby and you could see how creative tried to kind of interject us here and there and they’re like, ‘We got to do something with these guys. We don’t know what to do.’ So they just kept giving us little tidbits here and there, but it never led to anything. When you look back on it, yeah, it was a cluster, but the moment I decided to throw in the towel was the moment that Hunter had taken over and gotten behind Hawkins and I. He had pitched the whole stripper gimmick thing to us where Magic Mike had just come out, like Channing Tatum and Nash was in it. Hunter and Nash are buddies. It was like this big thing and so he just pitches the stripper gimmick to us. Hawkins and I are like, ‘Okay, yeah.’ He said, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter how you get over. Once you’re over, then we can bend and mold the characters from there, but let’s just get you guys over first.’ ‘Okay, cool’. Talked to Vince about it. Everybody loved it. Vince was just loving it, and it was after that second time, I just was like, ‘I gotta go. I can’t be here anymore.’ Like, my daughter was eight months old. She knew I was leaving. I was gone six days a week. I cannot be a FaceTime parent. This is not for me. So that’s when I was like, ‘Hey buddy, I love you, thank you for the ride, but, today’s my last day. That was it.”
This interview is exclusive to WrestlingNews.co. If you use these quotes, please include a link back to this page.
