Sheamus returned to WWE television in November 2019, after being absent since September, reverting back to his old non-mohawk look. A series of vignettes began to run, hyping his return to WWE SmackDown. He finally appeared in front of the live audience in January, taking out Shorty G with a Brouge Kick.

The old look with spiked hair brought back memories of Sheamus' singles run when he was a multi-time World. But the original idea for his return could have had him stuck on 205 Live.

"Mate, I got these notebooks of ideas from creative with like, a small moustache, and suspenders and my hair go over to the side…it looked almost exactly like Jack Gallagher from 205 Live and I said ‘you know, we have a person who looks just like this here, right?’ Man, if I did any of it any of those pictures, I’d just be done! I would have been toast. The amount of slaggings (abuse) I would have gotten.. and that would have just been off my granny! It was just terrible," Sheamus told Alex McCarthy of TalkSPORT. "But you know, we just went so far with the Mohawk. The Mohawk was done. I thought about it and, creatively, myself and a guy I work with called Ray, we just talked about it and it was like [debuting the mohawk] so shocking, you know, and I got that reaction ‘you look stupid’ and stuff and it was a great reaction. It was completely different because we we just hit a roadblock with whatever it was. You can’t go further than that."

Along with his old look, Sheamus wanted to bring back his old music, but WWE didn't go for it.

"So it made sense. People were asking on the channel, on social media – bring back the old Sheamus. So, I did. I wanted to bring back the old music too, but some things you can get and some things you can’t. But yeah, it’s very important, especially the spirit of the Celtic Warrior. That kick-ass, Celtic Warrior vibe. It made sense."

Sheamus returned to the ring, wrestling his first match since suffering a concussion in April 2019, on Wednesday at the WWE-BT Sport House Warming Party special event. You can find highlights from his match and his comments on suffering a concussion by clicking here.