One of the big talking points coming out of this week’s SmackDown was the revelation that Kevin Owens had been traded to SmackDown.

Owens was revealed as the trade for Jey Uso, and whilst Owens being on the blue brand is exciting for the SmackDown product, fans were quick to question why exactly this happened, as WWE didn’t have enough time to logically explain why Owens was selected. After all, Owens is in a tag-team with Sami Zayn, so there must be some kind of kayfabe explanation why WWE would want to disband a tag-team.

Thankfully, WWE Digital uploaded an interview with newly appointed SmackDown General Manager, Nick Aldis who explained how Owens being selected to move to SmackDown came about:

“My first order of business was to select and to negotiate for a trade in kind. Now, Jey Uso is a top-tier talent, so that kind of narrows the field as to who would be eligible. For me, as a GM, the most important responsibility I have is to the SmackDown audience. I knew that SmackDown fans would only tolerate a very small number of talent to be eligible to replace a talent of Jey Uso’s calibre. So when I got to thinking about it, there’s a lot of different moving parts, a lot of nuances. I won’t bore you with all those right now.”

“But I felt like Kevin Owens met the criteria for a number of reasons, one obviously being that he is a very top-tier talent. But also, we’re in a new season, and I feel like Kevin is entering a new season of his career, meaning that he has just come off an incredible run with Sami as the tag team champions. So I feel like the time is right for him to look at singles completion again. With that in mind, I felt like all of those different parts were in the right place, so I made a call to Kevin. We discussed things. I talked to Adam, I talked to Triple H. We made some negotiations, and we got the deal done.”

Do you think moving Owens over to SmackDown was the right move? Let us know in the comments below.