HOOK vs. "The Reality" zack clayton (AEW rampage, 08/19/2022)
on aew's crossover with jersey shore family vacation, shark week, and how corporate licensing shapes wrestling formally
HOOK has gotten tremendously over largely by being an avatar to project upon; it doesn’t hurt that he looks like an A24 dreamboat, but his silence and blankness has made him a perfectly elusive blank slate for memes. Zack Clayton, on the other hand, has taken an opposite approach, by making a name for himself through considerable vulnerability: what in past decades would have probably been considered “breaking kayfabe.”
Though the self-styled “The Reality” introduced himself to a cable audience on Rampage as a generic brand QT Marshall, his presence is tremendously different on Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, where in spite of his young age, he gives immense “I’m not the stepfather I’m the father who stepped up” vibes to JWoww’s children, to quite cute effect, and aside from an early drunken indiscretion in a club when he got a little too friendly with Angelina, he’s seemed like a genuinely supportive and grounding presence — though of course the question of whether or not this would-be superstar has been using JWoww for her own platform has always somewhat loomed. Likely to offset those kinds of concerns, Zack has often been quiet and solemn on the show, only opening up and joking around more recently, and the show took its time in introducing his wrestling career. JWoww organized a viewing party of AEW: Dark — probably the only time anyone has ever thrown a Nitro Party for a YouTube livestream wrestling show — to celebrate Clayton’s debut performance, which was conveniently re-edited / cut away from by the chefs at MTV to make it look like he won, when, in fact, he was squashed swiftly by Dark Order’s Pres10 Vance.
Zack’s line of work takes a larger focus in a frankly adorable Season 4 subplot, where he recruits the guys and JWoww’s kids to put on a “GuidoMania” wrestling show: Clayton tag teams with JWoww’s kids not just to get over himself with JWoww, but to put over the kids and make them feel like superstars. Of the boys, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino (whose son is literally named ROMEO REIGN???) is the most enthusiastic mark (though Zack also says later in the show that Angelina’s Chris is a big wrestling fan), but they’re all very excited to get in the ring and spend some honestly pretty grueling and impressive hours learning to take basic back bumps and do a few other moves. Each one creates a gimmick, with Vinny taking on a masked guido persona, and the significantly matured Sorrentino stepping into his old, unhinged, heelish self as “The Situation.” There’s a fascinating moment where “The Situation” and Ronny use the ring as a space to revisit their earlier real life feud in Italy, culminating in Sitch’s absolutely whacked out headbutt into a concrete wall, a bump not even Benoit would take, which is a strange parallel to how pro wrestling so often works real-life emotions and disagreements into narrative fodder. The Jersey Shore boys, as they say, are working!
Clayton has not mentioned Jersey Shore directly on AEW, though Clayton’s promos are very much wink-wink nudge-nudge all about New Jersey, JWoww (formerly of IMPACT Wrestling) and Snooki (herself of course a former WrestleMania competitor) have shown up on Dynamite, and Jim Ross *did* briefly plug Family Vacation on commentary. Given the New York vs. New Jersey overtones, I’m surprised they didn’t run this in Newark or Queens, but Clayton’s appearance is also conveniently the week before the season finale of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation (which based on the still fairly confused reaction by most AEW fans to Clayton, I assume I’m the only #AllElite viewer who also keeps up with the Jersey Shore extended universe). There’s a bit of mutual back-scratching going on, although not a direct cross-promotion since the two intellectual properties are the domain of opposing corporate overlords, WarnerMedia and Paramount. This isn’t the only time there’s been some incidental Forbidden Door tie-in between WarnerMedia and Paramount properties — it felt slightly ironic to me that AEW did a Shark Week show, since Shark Week works with WWE collaborators Jackass. More than some actual licensing deal, Clayton’s booking the week before the finale of his other show is just another attempt at drawing viewers from outside the normal pool of fans, which has made me think about just how frequently the form of wrestling itself is shaped by corporate cross-promotion.
More than the Zack Clayton squash match, this was most evident in the constant reminders that the last two episodes of AEW were brought to us by HBO’s new Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, with Dynamite opening on a ridiculous video package that cut together footage of AEW and medieval fantasies. The “Dragon” theme continued down to the book, featuring a 2 out of 3 falls match between American Dragon and the self-styled “Dragon Slayer” Daniel Garcia, featuring guest time-keeper Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat (much to my dismay, Garcia did not take the opportunity to don trunks that said “Dragon Slayer” on the ass, like Stunning Steve Austin did when he squared off with Steamboat), and a six-man main event that included Dragon Lee.
This summer’s Shark Week tie-in, of course, featured a barbed wire death match that, in a nod to notorious territory classics like the Chief Jay Strongbow and Don Kent shark cage match, or the numerous times Memphis managers were suspended mid-air in the Mid-South coliseum, cleverly made use of a shark cage (of course, as elaborate AEW gimmick matches tend to go, the concept was a little botched in execution). We’ve also seen gimmick matches like the now-memoryholed Cracker Barrel Clash between the supremely cursed trio of Darby Allin, Joey Janela, and Jimmy Havoc, which brought dinner rolls into play — like if the family-friendly Lego Group sponsored DDT deathmatches in which toy bricks are used in lieu of thumbtacks.
Usually when such cross-promotion impacts wrestling formally, it’s at the level of character: like when RoboCop saved Sting from the Cage, anime icons like Tiger Mask and Jushin Liger, or AAA’s recent collaborations with Marvel. But what’s slightly different about these sorts of AEW matches are the incorporation of product placement or branding into the match itself, but in a way that also loops back to wrestling history. As so many of Eddie Kingston’s recent masterworks have done, especially the blood and mustard concession stand brawl that was Anarchy in the Arena, the shark cage has shades of Memphis madness, but it also fulfills a demand of Tony Khan’s corporate obligations. As perhaps the most uncut capitalist of all entertainment industries, pro wrestling is inevitably informed by bottomline demands and quotas and Product, so it is at the very least compelling to see those inevitable elements of the Show woven in at a subtler level of the match itself, rather than just stitching advertisement onto the canvas.