There’s a particular kind of silence that fills the air before a flyer takes off—just the thud of sneakers, the inhale of the crowd, and then the lift. And if you’ve watched Gabi Butler do what she does best, you know the moment.
The apex.
The hang time.
The sheer impossibility of a human being twisting like that in midair.
But Gabi’s no longer launching herself into pyramids or sticking full layouts on blue mats. She’s trading pom-poms for pyrotechnics, toe-touches for turnbuckles. And she’s doing it under the roaring lights of WWE.
Welcome to the second act of one of America’s most recognizable cheerleaders.
And maybe—just maybe—its most dangerous.
The Rise of a Star Among Stars
Born on January 16, 1998, Gabriella Butler was bouncing and backflipping before she could spell the word “competition.” By the age of eight, she was already deep in the high-octane world of competitive cheer—a world where bodies fly, joints shatter, and judges blink for one second too long and miss a full twisting double back.
By her teens, Butler wasn’t just part of the scene—she was the scene.
She joined elite squads like California All Stars Smoed, Top Gun TGLC, Cheer Athletics Wildcats, and Gymtyme Blink. With Smoed, she claimed back-to-back World Championship titles in 2013 and 2014, flipping her name into folklore.
But fame, like gravity, is a force that can’t be escaped.
Netflix’s docuseries Cheer catapulted her into national recognition, chronicling her time at Navarro College under the iron hand and compassionate eye of Coach Monica Aldama. It wasn’t just a show—it was a cultural moment, a hard look at the blood-and-glitter world of cheerleading.
And there was Gabi: unshaken, smiling, driven.
The perfectionist flyer with a spine of steel and a social media following the size of a football stadium.
From Spotlights to Suplexes
Then came the swerve.
In November 2022, reports surfaced: Gabi Butler had signed with WWE.
The cheer world gasped. The wrestling world raised an eyebrow. But if you know anything about Butler, it made sense.
Wrestling is showmanship and athleticism poured into a steel ring. And Butler, long a master of mid-air magic, was now stepping into a world where gravity is optional and characters are king.
By 2023, she was training at the WWE Performance Center—the factory that forged the likes of Bianca Belair, Charlotte Flair, and Roman Reigns. She joined a class of hopefuls, most with wrestling dreams, few with her résumé, and none with her back-handspring-to-back-elbow combo.
And in that ring, beneath the lights, Butler wasn’t just adapting—she was evolving.
She was learning how to take a bump, how to sell a headlock, how to build a story with sweat and silence.
What Cheer Built, Wrestling Honed
Butler doesn’t enter the ring like your average rookie. She’s walked red carpets. Sat on Ellen’s couch. Has millions of followers on TikTok.
She’s been famous.
But WWE is a different kind of fame. It’s harder. Louder. Meaner. You can’t edit your way out of a blown spot.
What separates her?
It’s not just the athleticism—though she has that in spades. It’s not the camera sense—though she’s better lit than most stars half her age.
It’s the resilience.
Cheerleading prepared her for performance under pressure. For being the one who gets thrown, and the one who lands it perfectly. And when the world expects perfection, anything less is failure.
WWE has a different demand: pain.
You have to feel it. You have to sell it. You have to live it.
And if early reports from Florida are to be believed, Gabi Butler’s figuring that out fast.
The Road Ahead
There’s a long way to go. Butler hasn’t debuted on NXT, hasn’t grabbed a mic and called out the champ, hasn’t eaten a finisher in front of a live crowd.
Yet.
But the potential is nuclear. She’s got the built-in fanbase. The drive. The story.
Imagine the arc: the world-class cheerleader turned ring warrior. The flyer who now flies off turnbuckles instead of pyramids.
The crowd eats that up.
And WWE knows it.
Legacy in Motion
Even if Gabi Butler walks away tomorrow, she’s already shifted the goalposts.
She proved that cheerleading isn’t just high kicks and ponytails—it’s combat dressed up with choreography.
And now, she’s showing that athletes from that world don’t just belong in WWE.
They might just dominate it.
There’s something poetic about it all.
Gabi Butler spent her life being lifted.
Now she’s learning to lift others—slam them, twist them, pin them.
The flyer became the fighter.
And gravity?
It still doesn’t apply.
