Gabi Butler's Unexpected Journey From Netflix's Cheer To WWE

In 2020, Gabi Butler described her passion for her sport by telling The Face, "I was basically cheering out of the womb." However, she wasn't always one of cheer's biggest, er, cheerleaders. In an appearance on Kaitlyn Bristowe's "Off the Vine" podcast, Butler admitted that she used to look down on cheerleading, thinking that it was all about shaking pom-poms and chanting in unison. "I just thought, 'Oh, cheerleaders are just like those popular mean girls,'" she added. 

As a young child, Butler decided that gymnastics class was the right fit for her. "I'm very much an athlete," she said. But when she was 8 years old, her mom pushed her to give cheerleading practice a chance. Butler reluctantly agreed, and after learning that there was acro and tumbling involved, she decided that she could put up with getting primped and acting peppy for the sake of the sport. "I found out that it was much more than what I thought it was," she recalled. "A week later I quit gymnastics and moved straight into cheerleading, and I just fell in love with it from that very day," she said in an interview with Weber State University.

Butler also had a sibling to look to for cheerleading inspiration. On Twitter, she revealed that her older sister, Ashley Gaffoglio-Ricardo, was actually her family's first cheer star. Ashley didn't start competing until age 16 but managed to win a pair of world titles.

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