Christian explains why he jumped to TNA in 2005

“It was a combination of different things, why that happened. One of them was being burnt out, with being tired. My body was beat up. I’d been on the road straight since I was 24 (years old). I think I was, like, 31, at the time when I left. And also, it just kind of felt like I was stuck in a rut and my situation wasn’t going to change if I stayed there at that point. It was like, ‘We know what we have with him. He’s there, he’s doing his thing, he’s good, (and) when something comes up, we’ll figure it out.’ But that time never came for me. even in that first kind of run, I had a little TV program that I did with (John) Cena and I was starting to get these crazy reactions and nothing happened from there. I still didn’t seem to move up from there. It was one match. (It) turned into a triple threat with (Chris) Jericho on the pay-per-view and kind of got shuffled around again after that, so to me, I was like ‘Well, if I was getting those reactions and getting put in that spot and it’s still not happening, I have to do something here to change my situation,’ and that’s when I decided to, when my contract was up, I was probably going to step away for a little while.”

source: E&C podcast