Zach Gowen Says He Didn’t Have the Proper ‘Emotional Maturity’ For His WWE Run

Zach Gowen’s time in WWE lasted under a year, and he explained why in a new interview. Gowen was with WWE from May of 2003 to February of 2004, and he talked about why his run didn’t last longer in an interview on Insight with Chris Van Vliet.

“I didn’t have the wherewithal … or the emotional maturity,” Gowen told Van Vliet (per Wrestling Inc). “[I didn’t have] the self-control or the foundation to be able to handle the gift that I’d received. It was beyond my ability to just be a human being, or to be a wrestler, or to be someone responsible. I indulged quite a bit. Pretty much every opportunity. Because you have to understand, at high school, I never drank, I never smoked, and never went on any dates. So all of a sudden, at 19, a year later you’re a WWE Superstar, all of that becomes available, and it was like, ‘Yeah, finally. I’ve arrived. This is great.'”

He continued, “And it wasn’t so much the drugs and the alcohol at that time, it was the inability just to be a productive member of a team. The inability to conduct myself as a representative of a worldwide billion-dollar company. I didn’t have the tools to do it.”