Shawn Michaels

Longtime fan and occasional question asker here(since Wrestleline days):

At what point did Shawn Michaels know he was coming back to wrestle HHH? Was it when he came back to lead the nWo, which involved some threats to HHH and could have logically led to a match if the angle hadn’t been abruptly dropped, or was it when HHH came to Raw in July and tension was immediately teased between them? I seem to recall that there was no prior buzz that Shawn could wrestle again, so the match came as a surprise and you were initially skeptical about it. Was it a last minute idea or did WWE actually manage to keep the news that Shawn was active again from leaking?

​It was pretty last minute as I recall, and Shawn legit thought that the Summerslam match was going to be one and done because he really hadn’t done much in the way of prepping for a return. And then it turned out that his back was pretty much miraculously healed and he decided to just stick around for another whole career. ​