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

Gimme a W! Gimme another W! Gimme me an E! What's that spell? An unexpected entry on the résumé of competitive cheerleader Gabi Butler. As her career as a collegiate athlete was winding down, the talented flyer surprised her fans by telling People that she wanted to bring her mesmerizing aerial stunts to the wrestling ring.

Butler was one of the standout stars of the Netflix docuseries "Cheer," which followed Navarro College's cheerleading squad as they pursued a championship title at the NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer and Dance Championship in Daytona. In addition to impressing viewers with her extreme flexibility, Butler floored them with her fearlessness. Her role as a flyer called for her to be tossed high up in the air, and she had split seconds to perform a series of dizzying flips and twists as she fell.

"Cheer" lifted the veil on the cutthroat world of college cheerleading, showing viewers that a lot of blood, sweat, and tears go into those perfectly polished routines. "We put ourselves at a high risk because it is a dangerous sport," Butler told Cosmopolitan. And don't let the big hairbows and dazzling smiles fool you — seasoned pros like Butler rise through the ranks in the cheer world by being ruthless competitors. "If someone says, ​'Winning isn't everything,' they're lying," she told The Face. Now that she's set her sights on conquering a new frontier, we're charting the ambitious athlete's course from the top of the pyramid to the WWE.

Gabi Butler told Weber State University that she was the least talented member of her team when she first started cheerleading, but she soon became one of the internet's first cheerlebrities. On "Off the Vine," she revealed that she was already so famous within the cheerleading community by age 12 that she was touring the country to participate in cheerleading camps, where she helped other young athletes sharpen their skills.

Butler started racking up the views on YouTube in 2011 by demonstrating her stretching routine for her subscribers, and the advent of Instagram also helped further her cheer career. By 2013, she had amassed a large enough following to attract the attention of The Wire, which asked her to share her thoughts about some of her fellow cheerlebrities. "What they're known for is kind of like the hair and makeup and abs," she said. "I'm kind of like the opposite. Like, I post a lot of videos of me tumbling, hard work stuff, and motivating things." The use of this quote infuriated Butler, who complained on Facebook, "This writer is trying to make me look bad and make it look like I was talking bad about people when I WAS NOT!!!"

Butler also revealed that she disliked the "cheerlebrity" label, but she wasn't about to fade into obscurity anytime soon. In 2014, the word was used to describe her again when she was profiled for a "Nightline" special about the world of competitive cheerleading. 

While her move to the West Coast made it possible for Gabi Butler to boast about being a world champ, she discovered that winning isn't everything. In a 2014 episode of "Cheerleaders," she revealed that she was suffering from an extreme case of homesickness, and visiting her friends and family members back in Florida only made it worse. "I basically forced myself to go on the plane," she said of her reluctance to return to California. She ultimately decided to give up her spot with California All Stars so that she could go back home, and she launched a new YouTube channel, Gabi Butler Cheer, to keep fans updated on her life.

During a Q&A, Butler assured her fans that she had no plans to give up cheering for good. "I just kind of took a break," she said. "It's good to have a break once in a while; it gives you time to just relax and do your own thing." Butler also briefly veered away from solely creating cheer content — she filmed a holiday special, hopped in the ring with MMA pro Kimbo Slice, and got a crash course in BMX riding. But a month after her experiment with being a YouTuber began, she announced that she had joined the Kentucky-based team GymTyme Blink – which just happened to be the subject of another web series, "Cheer Full Out." Butler's international coed group placed 3rd at the 2015 Cheerleading Worlds, per Flocheer.

Some "Cheer" fans didn't walk away with the best impression of Gabi Butler's parents. In one infamous scene, her mom, Debbie Butler, shared some dubious diet advice. Per InStyle, she claimed that eating jackfruit would make it possible for Gabi to endure up to 12 hours of depriving her body of any other nutrition. "Gabi Butler's parents are controlling and neurotic, and they have done nothing but milk her like a cash cow," one critic tweeted.

The online backlash to Debbie and John Butler's behavior became so intense that Gabi decided to address it on Twitter. She revealed that none of the money she makes goes to her parents, and she credited them with making her successful cheer career possible. "So please stop with the negativity towards them," she wrote. "They are my biggest support system and have helped me to be on top of my game." Showrunner Greg Whiteley also apologized [16:20] for the way the show's editing painted Gabi's parents in a mostly negative light. "I think I could have done a better job as a storyteller in fleshing out the other elements of them," he admitted on "The Business" podcast.

But when Gabi appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," she revealed that watching "Cheer" caused her mom and dad to have an epiphany about their overbearing behavior. "My parents were like, 'Wow, maybe we do need to let her be more independent and let her make her own decisions for herself,'" she said.

Long before Netflix launched the flyer into a new stratosphere of fame, Gabi Butler's cheerlebrity status made her an in-demand model for companies selling cheer gear. She was a spokesmodel for the Stunt Stand training device, and she posed on the cover of the 2013 GK Cheer catalog. More opportunities to work with brands came after she appeared in "Cheer," including collaborating with Rebel Athletic Cheer on her own line of activewear and modeling prom dresses for ASHLEYLauren. By the time countless other companies had started clamoring to work with her, Gabi was already a seasoned pro at posing for the type of sun-drenched modeling shots that induce envy in the hearts of Instagram influencers' FOMO-afflicted followers. 

In 2019, Gabi and her sisters, Ashley Gaffoglio-Ricardo and Amanda Butler, co-founded a swimwear line called The Bikini Block. Speaking to Us Weekly, Ashley shared the origin story of the company's name. The sisters had started purchasing bikinis for themselves from a Brazilian brand, and they saw dollar signs when they became the belles of the beach. "The next thing you know, everybody on the block was wearing our suits. So it went from bikinis for the block to The Bikini Block," she explained. 

The sisters often model their swimwear themselves and use Instagram to promote their brand. They stress that they sell swimsuits designed with active women in mind, and Gabi has proved that their bikinis don't budge even when she's performing cheer stunts in them.

The Navarro team trained hard in hopes of defending their championship title, but their dreams were crushed when the COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the 2020 NCA & NDA Collegiate Cheer and Dance Championship. "It was like a knife just kind of slowly grinding its way through your heart because it was like you worked so hard for something all year and we were right there," Gabi Butler told The List. It was supposed to be her final year competing with Navarro, but she didn't end her college cheerleading career on that low note. She explained to Marie Claire that the 2020 season essentially didn't count, so was still eligible to compete in 2021.

But when Butler and her teammates made their triumphant return to Daytona, Navarro's longtime rivals, Trinity Valley Community College, emerged victorious. The loss served as the bittersweet ending of the second season of "Cheer." In an interview with Distractify, Butler admitted that her team's defeat was deserved because they made a mistake. "It definitely was a very sad situation because that routine, I can say hands down, it was the best routine that Navarro ever put out," she said. "We put so much time into it and so much effort." Speaking to ET, Butler also defended Monica Aldama, saying that Navarro's loss had nothing to do with the coach's decision to join the "Dancing with the Stars" cast and place an assistant coach in charge of the squad's training.

For cheer competitions, Gabi Butler undergoes a hair and makeup transformation not unlike that of a beauty pageant contestant. However, her primping is preceded by her body taking a beating week after week. To ensure that she was properly prepared to perform her challenging cheer stunts during the 2020 season, she relied on the expertise of trainer Marc Bowron. "All the exercises we do can help translate into cheer-specific movements and training," Bowron told Shape of their hour-long workout sessions.

Some days were centered on strength training, while others were all about endurance. And Bowron didn't just tell Butler to hop on a treadmill and call it a day — he incorporated lunges, burpees, and other calisthenics into her sweat sesh. He also designed special power workouts for Butler that were aimed at keeping her body primed to perform the explosive movements that tumbling requires. Butler has crafted her own workout routine as well. In a vlog, she revealed that she does a lot of core work, such as leg lifts and plank hip dips.

When she was training with her teammates, Butler's workouts were even more brutal. According to Muscle & Fitness, cheer practice was three hours long, and sometimes it was scheduled twice a day. As far as her weight is concerned, Butler doesn't worry about it — she just focuses on eating healthy. "To me, if you have strength, then it doesn't really matter about being super, super tiny," she said.

What's a girl to do when she can no longer cheer in college? Take acting lessons so that she can star in a "Bring It On" remake, perhaps? While Gabi Butler didn't list this as one of her possible post-cheer career options, she did say that one job in the film industry appealed to her. "I actually used to talk about being a stunt double ... That's something I would absolutely consider," she told Elite Daily.

While Butler knows that she can't tumble and defy gravity forever, the flyer does tend to gravitate toward professions where there's a high potential for bodily harm. She told Cosmopolitan that she'd love to join the Cirque du Soleil cast, saying, "I mean, it's hard, but I've trained a lot." She's even considered becoming a professional dancer. "Cheerleading, it is a lot on your body and it's very harsh, but I think dance — hip hop dancing, or just dancing in general — that would be a really good thing for me to get into," she said in an interview with Marie Claire.

Butler told Cosmopolitan that she believes that she'd also make an excellent cheerleading coach, but she has one big goal she'd like to accomplish before she hangs up her oversize hairbow for good: competing in the Olympics. "I would love to represent USA ... and with my work ethic, I think I could do it," she said in an interview with People.