Much more details are now known regarding how Christian's return to WWE went down last week in Fresno, CA according to a lengthy report by The Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Here is how things reportedly went down. Michael Hayes first came up with the original introduction plan of having Christian be the person doing the random attacks on Jeff Hardy and be revealed at the Royal Rumble. These plans were then changed later either because people figured it out or because Hayes started to get wind on the backstage opinion of Christian. Vince McMahon was said to never be high on Christian and as time went on he still wasn't despite the company signing him to a new deal. Hayes then approached Vince on having the idea of Matt attack Jeff at the Royal Rumble instead feeling a Matt vs. Jeff match at WrestleMania 25 would be a bigger program than Christian vs. Jeff. Vince agreed and that is what they ended up doing in late January.

After these plans were executed, Christian was described as being largely forgotten about by those making final decisions creatively. The general WWE stance is that they are not big on debuting people after the Rumble and before WrestleMania because they usually have all the matches and storylines in place for WrestleMania ready to go after the Rumble. This had been the format for most years anyway, although this year many things were up in the air even going into the No Way Out PPV last weekend. John Laurinaitis was said to be pushing to do something with Christian instead of having him sit on the sidelines until April. While all of this was going on, Vince was said to have started souring on him.

For those who many not remember, back in 2005, whenever suggestions were made to do anything with Christian, Vince nixed them right right and saw him strictly as a midcard player. He even went as far as to stay in WWE meetings that he had no star aura and that his head shot promotional photo was one of the worst he had ever seen saying it looked too ordinary. Vince also reportedly described him as the personification of vanilla and was very negative when Brian Gewirtz wanted to bring him to Raw.

RAW writer Brian Gewirtz asked about bringing him to RAW after Matt got the spot on SmackDown, but there was concern he would end up like D-Lo Brown - just hired and forgot about without getting a chance. They came up with the idea to give him a new feud with someone Vince is high on, that being Jack Swagger. They felt the longer they didn’t get him on TV, the more likely he’d end up never to get going and this was the best thing they had for him. The original idea for the ECW show had the same opener with the two but several segments were planned that showed Christian meeting the talent on the brand and putting him over like it was a big thing he was there.