Transitioning was like ‘second puberty’ says trans WWE star Gabbi Tuft
Tuft is a former WWE wrestler who came out as trans in 2021. (Getty)
Transgender WWE star Gabbi Tuft has opened up about her transition after leaving professional wrestling, and suggested she might even return to the sport in the future.
Assigned male at birth, Tuft competed in the men’s division of the sport between 2008 and 2012. She came out publicly as transgender in 2021.
While Tuft was competing, she weighed 280 pounds and would eat 10,000 calories a day to build the physique required to compete at a high level in wrestling. When she transitioned, she says that losing all of that muscle and weight was “a chore”.
“I was the protector. I was the alpha male of alpha males and everything I did revolved around that. But when I made the decision to medically transition, it was so powerful that I was truly ready to release it all,” she recently told Fox.
Tuft compared her look at the time to “a cross between Ragnar Lothbrok and the Mountain from Game of Thrones with tattoos”, joking that no one would “miss” her when she was “walking up and down the street in heels and women’s clothes”.
She continued: “God is it hard to get rid of that much muscle. I was shocked how much muscle I retained. I forced my body to burn muscle with these long extended cardiovascular sessions at high intensity and stayed in keto for a very long time, and I stopped lifting weights. That’s the short version.”
Tuft admitted that transitioning was sort of “like going through a second puberty” for her.
But it was worth it as Tuft previously admitted in an essay for Business Insider that she had “reached a point where [she] became incredibly depressed over the thought of not being able to transition”, likening herself to “a behemoth of a man at the time”.
It was due to her wife Priscilla, who asked about Tuft’s desire to transition, that the latter felt like she could be open about it.
However, after Tuft began to transition, the couple separated after Priscilla mentioned that |she wasn’t feeling sexually attracted” to Tuft.
Tuft said that she and her soon-to-be ex-wife are “still the best of friends”.
She told Fox: “We are separated now, and we’re kind of like in the middle of a divorce that we’re not in a rush to finish. She and I are still best of friends. We co-parent. We see each other every day.”
“There’s so much love between us. We had our ups and downs as we separated. But we’ve done my full circle,” she added.
Tuft is now a well-known TikToker making videos about fitness and nutrition.
