SCOUSE STYLE!
Jack Rea (born August 8, 1990 at Liverpool, Merseyside, England) is a British former Association Football player turned professional wrestler and wrestling trainer who is signed to WWE (more specifically, the NXT 2.0 brand) and also competes in PROGRESS Wrestling. He was trained by Alex Shane and Andy Baker.
He also competed in other promotions such as FutureShock Wrestling (where he debuted in 2009 as Zack Diamond), Preston City Wrestling, Insane Championship Wrestling, IPW: UK and Defiant Wrestling. He's 2x FSW Champion, 2x GPW British champion, 1x GPW Heavyweight champion, 1x NGW tag Team champion, 1x PWI:BWP World Catchweight champion and 2x PROGRESS Tag Team champion with James Drake.
He was signed to the WWE in 2018 and debuted at the WWE UK Championship Tournament, which he won, granting him a championship shot against the WWE UK champion Pete Dunne. As part of NXT UK, he's 1x NXT UK Tag Team Champion with James Drake/Jagger Reed.
Outside of wrestling he has his own promotion, called Infinite Promotions.
You can find more info about him on Cagematch
and WrestlingData.
NUMBER ONE TROPES!
- Aborted Arc:
- His involvement with the IPW invaders at Defiant Wrestling wasn't fully explored and he moved on to a feud against Rampage Brown.
- Defiant #9 was originally going to be Team Gibson vs. Team Rampage, as in, Zack Gibson and his two best trainees against Rampage against his two best trainees. What happened instead? Gibson's trainees couldn't make it to the show, so he instead found proper replacements in the form of former Prospect members Alex Gracie and Drake.
- Always Introduces Themselves:"I am Zack Gibson, Liverpool's number one! Soooooon to be recognized as <promotion>'s number one! Soooooon to be recognized as UK's number one! Sooooooon to be recognized as the world's number one!"
- Ascended Meme: Being from Liverpoolnote he usually gets "Where's my car stereo?" chanted at him in PROGRESS. At Chapter 35, he actually brought a car stereo out from under the ring to use as a weapon.
- Author Appeal: He's a big fan of Liverpool FC. Most of his clothing is inspired by the Reds, and he even has shirts designed as football shirts. He even had "You'll Never Walk Alone" as his entrance theme in many promotions.
- Badass Boast: See at the top.
- Bald of Evil: He's a heel in a lot of promotions, and he's bald.
- Beard of Evil: Sports a large beard, and he's a heel in many promotions.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Defiant #4 had Zack Gibson crushing "Flash" Morgan Webster and asking for a bigger challenge. Cue Rampage Brown's theme.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: To an extent, at Defiant #5 he takes some potshots towards WhatCulture Wrestling, the channel which gave birth to WCPW, now Defiant. Afterwards, he reveals himself as part of IPW.
- The Bus Came Back: In PROGRESS, he didn't have any appearances between Chapters 1 and 12.
- Catchphrase: He recites the exact same promo every time he has a match.
- Cheap Heat: A master of these. Being from Liverpool, and with PROGRESS mainly doing shows in London, his gimmick is that he's a Liverpool FC fan, and he's a huge heat magnet because of it. It comes across as him being a Foreign Wrestling Heel despite living and being born in the same country the promotion is active in. Then there's the constant lecturings to the "smart fans" such as the one he did at Defiant #10.
- Crowd Chant: "Where's my car stereo?", "Stand up/sit down if you hate Gibson", "If you hate Gibson, shoes off!" and occasionally "Sign on, with a pen in your hand".
- Dirty Coward: At Defiant #9 he was joined by former Prospect members Alex Gracie and Drake for his match against Team Rampage. When he saw that his team was going to lose, he escaped and watched from the entrance how Drake was pinned. To add insult to injury, if Team Gibson won the match, the fight at Defiant Chain Reaction was going to be a 3-on-1 handicap match. The result? Team Rampage won, so the match at Defiant Chain Reaction is a straight 1-on-1 instead.
- Hate Sink:
- The crowd absolutely loathes him for being from Liverpool.
- Also as part of The Origin with Nathan Cruz, some of the main reasons being:
- Both Nathan Cruz and him being prone to long, annoying promos.
- Their theme is a mellow power ballad with a good minute of intro before they even come out. Depending on how many matches they're in and could win, it plays up to 4 times a show.
- Throughout their second tag title reign, they kept winning matches in increasingly frustrating ways, show after show.
- At Thunderbastard 2016, he eliminated about 5 faces just by avoiding everyone and locking in his submission move when they were down.
- The Mentor: Has his own wrestling school.
- Miles Gloriosus: When you call yourself "Liverpool's Number One" and go on ranting about your pretensions to be "the world's number one", this is bound to happen. Case in point? Primate. ''Defiant #11''.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Got tired of Defiant's mistreating, and their crowd. Hence, he turned to IPW.
- Oh, Crap!: At Defiant #5 he just finished kicking Flash Morgan Webster's ass when Rampage's music hits in.
- Power Stable:
- The Cause, with Axl Rage, Dave Rayne, James Drake, Sean Daniels and Sam Bailey.
- The Origin, with Damon Moser, Dave Mastiff, El Ligero and Nathan Cruz.
- The Dyad, with James Drake and Joe Gacy.
- Power Trio: The Rapture, with Charlie Sterling and Sha Samuels.
- Phrase Catcher: "Shoes off if you hate Gibson" (a football meme).
- Red Baron: "Liverpool's Number One"
- Running Gag: He delivers the exact same promo before each of his matches. Every time, the crowd boos incredibly loudly to try and prevent him from even speaking.
- Shout-Out: His finishing moves are the Helter Skelter (a cradled corkscrew brainbuster) and Shankly Gates (a grounded wrist-lock).
- Tag Team:
- In FSW he was part of Team GB with Sam Bailey, Zack Attack with Jack Lightning, and Carnival Krew with The JokeRico.
- In PROGRESS Wrestling he's part of the Grizzled Young Veterans with James Drake. Previously in PROGRESS, he was part of The Origin with Nathan Cruz, El Ligero and Dave Mastiff.
- In OTT Wrestling, he leads The Rapture, teaming with Charlie Sterling and Sha Samuels.
- Take That, Audience!: An epic one at Defiant #3:"I'm looking 'round the room and I'm seeing a lot of Bullet Club tops. A lot of Bullet Club tops from a room full of people who are absolutely blaggin' that they watch New Japan. Absolutely blaggin that you subscribe to New Japan. There are only two subscriptions on your bank statements: the WWE Network and Pornhub Premium. (*heat*) Don't laugh, don't patronize me. Listen! Just because after every match you send your 5-star ratings to Big Dave... it does not make you smart. Just because when this div here is doing his intros you shout 'One Fall!'... it does not make you smart. What it makes you... is a large collection of absolutely bellends. You. You are the problem with wrestling. You are the ones pushing this great industry further, and further,
into a niche market. And I, Liverpool's Number One, Zack Gibson, am the one who is going to take it back to the mainstream, where we belong!" - Talking the Monster to Death: Tried talking his way out of his fight against Mihai on Defiant #7. He screwed it when he called Mihai a "bitch".
- Tournament Arc: He won two Tournaments to date: the FSW Lotto Tournament in 2013, and the WWE UK Championship Tournament in 2018.
- Welcome Back, Traitor: In spite of him being in league with IPW, he was still with Defiant, possibly because his involvement in the feud with Rampage prevented him from taking an active part on the IPW team's screwing of Defiant. It didn't mean that he wasn't punished, though: he was squashed by Primate at Defiant #11 and thus didn't got to be part of the "Magnificent Seven" match.
- Wrestling Monster: Was built as a heelish one in Defiant Wrestling after the promotion's name change. He even defeated future Defiant champion Rampage, but the streak came to an end at the qualifiers for the Magnificent Seven briefcase with Primate squashing him.
