During the Ruthless Aggression Era, WWE had an influx of new featured faces, most famously including John Cena, Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton, and Batista. One of the more forgotten talents who nonetheless was featured on the SmackDown brand for a year and half was young Zach Gowen. He’s best remembered for wrestling on one leg. More than a novelty act, he did demonstrate flashes of brilliance as a performer. More over he had surprising longevity in the larger wrestling business, having continued to wrestle on smaller stages into the 2010s. The question remains, though, looking back, if Gowen should have been a bigger star in WWE?
Zach Gowen Was A Truly Unique WWE Superstar
One of the challenges WWE has faced in the last twenty years is presenting a slate of diverse wrestlers whom fans can readily distinguish from one another. Some of that’s a result of WWE’s dominance over the wrestling business. As the biggest promotion in the world, they’ve set the standard, making a particularly body builder style the ideal to strive toward for WWE hopefuls. Moreover, WWE developmental territories have tended to gear themselves toward making the same kinds of wrestlers in the molds of men like John Cena and Randy Orton.
Being a one-legged wrestler, not to mention a Cruiserweight who could take to the air remarkably well for an athlete wrestling on one leg, made Zach Gowen genuinely different from anyone else in WWE before or since. An cluster of talents who had come up through the indies mixed things up for a time with performers like CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and Kevin Owens challenging the standard. However, the recent rebranding of NXT has seemed to single a move back toward everyone looking more similar to one another and working the same style. This modern era only calls more attention to the value of having had someone like Gowen in the spotlight.
Zach Gowen Was Featured Too Prominently Too Soon
One of the reasons why Zach Gowen couldn't thrive in the long term was that WWE pushed him too hard too soon. Upon his debut, he was quickly thrust into a feud with Sean O’Haire which, in and of itself, may have been fine. O’Haire had Rowdy Roddy Piper in his corner, though, and so Hulk Hogan soon backed up Gowen.
Related: Ruthless Aggression: Hulk Hogan's 2000s Return To The WWE, Explained
Being in Hogan’s orbit gave Gowen a rub, but it also may have been too much too soon. Having Gowen soon involved in a program opposite Mr. McMahon and before long mixing it up in mismatches opposite The Big Show and Brock Lesnar all over-exposed the youngster. Being featured so prominently also made it feel like a fall from grace when, late in his run, he gravitated toward the excellent Cruiserweight division of the time, to wrestle guys like Matt Hardy and Tajiri. Working at that level and organically gathering crowd support arguably would have set him up for greater longevity in WWE.
Zach Gowen May Have Had A Shelf Life With The WWE Audience
Even if WWE had been more patient and steady in bringing along Zach Gowen, he may have still had a shelf life with WWE fans. The story of him as sympathetic and inspirational underdog worked for a year and half, and maybe could have for another year or two. It’s difficult to imagine him ever being a credible main eventer, though, and hard to imagine the act working as a heel. In the end, it’s fathomable he could have had a more sustained run in WWE, but difficult to imagine him winding up a much bigger star.
There’s also the matter of Gowen’s attitude. He hadn’t yet celebrated his twentieth birthday when he appeared on SmackDown. From a more mature perspective, he has conceded in shoot interviews that he had a poor attitude during his WWE tenure, which included not paying others the proper respect, and decline a fairly reasonable directive to step back into the developmental system to grow as a performer and improve upon his physique. With this added perspective, it becomes all the easier to see why WWE didn’t feel they could do more with Gowen.
Zach Gowen has a place in wrestling history for being the teenaged, one-legged wrestler who was involved in a handful of memorable angles with some of the biggest names in the business, including Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Brock Lesnar, and Vince McMahon himself. What he brought to the table as a performer and his personality at the time put a ceiling on what WWE could ultimately do with him, though. In contrast to those talents who over or under-achieved during the Ruthless Aggression Era, it seems fair to say Gowen's run ultimately matched his potential.
