Everybody was shocked the he returned on ECW instead of Raw
The same old gets boring fast and in the age of internet spoilers some of the best bits about wrestling has been lost. Let's face it, the first Nitro starting the war was based on shock value. You could say a lot of what we see today is based on shock value in one way or another, we tune in because we want to see the unexpected or at least a large part of the audience does.
They needed to do something with ECW because it wasn't really taken seriously to the point where a lot of posters were suggesting it isn't 'cannon'. It's being discussed a bit more now, maybe they can continue to build it up.