Tyler Reks Talks Leaving The Spotlight, New Business and More

In an interview with Wrestling365 Radio, former WWE superstar Gabe “Tyler Reks” Tuft discussed his loclal marketing business since, his time in the WWE, whether he would return to the company if the option was offered to him, his BodySpartan fitness product and much more.

Highlights of the interview are below:

On what got him into wrestling: “I hope it’s not too repetitive, but I was in the right place at the right time. My buddy was Rick Bassman, who owned UPW and he literally was like, hey man, there’s a tryout, I know you’re not into wrestling, come up and check it out and next thing I know, I’m at a tryout in Deep South Wrestling, I loved it, I had a great time and a year later I ended up in Tampa (with the WWE). I closed down 2 businesses, sold a condo and just moved.”

On whether it’s been tough being out of the spotlight since 2012: “You know, I think every wrestler that either retires or gets released will always miss being in front of the fans, it’s like a drug. You feed off of it, you feel alive, there’s an energy that surges through the crowd and for those 8-20 minutes depending on how long you’ve got, it’s all eyes on you and it’s really cool, so yeah, I do miss not being in the spotlight, because that was fun, but I don’t miss the travel and I don’t miss the politics and I love being good to my family, so there’s goods and bads that go with it.”

On his local marketing business: “If it’s digital, we do it, so, the short version is my brother-in-law has been doing digital marketing since about 2000 and he started a company called Dealer Current not too long after that and Dealer Current focuses on auto-dealership and so they do social media, SEO, websites, reputation management or specifically, car dealership. They’ve got some high-end in-house software that’s proprietary that they made for social media. It’s really cool man, like, you take your targeted keyword phrases, so if you’re looking to sell, let’s say a 2014 Mercedes C250, you put in your keywords and it will create a unique video title, let’s say you want to blast a video out to around 50 different sites, it’ll create a unique title for each one that’s a little bit different than the last one, unique descriptions, unique meta titles, unique meta data, the whole 9 yards is done for you and it’s really efficient and it really works, so they got a name for themselves. My brother-in-law rang me about a year before I retired and said hey Gabe, I know you don’t want to wrestle forever and he goes, I kind of want to get out of the auto industry and start poking around doing some local marketing and start to help these other businesses and he said, do you want to do something and I said absolutely. I had always kind of being a closet geek doing website design on my own, but I was brought up to speed on the things I missed in the last 4 years when I was wrestling and we just took off. There’s 11 people in our company now and we do everything from the Mom & Pop, little local business, health clubs and a bunch of attorneys, so it’s really focused on local marketing and how do we do social media, SEO, websites and reputation management and drive more business for these companies and that’s what we do, we make them more money using the internet.”

Reks also discussed if he would return to the WWE as a trainer at the WWE Performance Center if the option was offered, his BodySpartan workout product, why he enjoys being a family man these days and is able to get out of bed easier than before. The former WWE superstar also took part in a word association game with names including Curtis Axel, John Cena, Drew McIntyre, Christian, Vince McMahon, Daniel Bryan, Curt Hawkins, Triple H, CM Punk and Tyler Reks himself.