Storyline update on Kevin Owens being traded from WWE RAW to Smackdown

As seen during the October 13th 2023 edition of WWE Smackdown, new General Manager Nick Aldis announced that Kevin Owens has been traded from RAW to Smackdown. Steve Carrier of RingsideNews.com was told that Owens “was the one they had in mind when the Jey Uso trade was announced” and “this was not a late decision for WWE creative.”

After the show, Aldis commented on the move…

“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 caliber. 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 a 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.”

Owens also commented on his tag team with Sami Zayn being split up…

I’m excited to be on SmackDown. It’s bittersweet. My tag team partner and friend Sami Zayn is still on Raw, so I think that effectively ends our partnership, for now anyway. So that’s kind of a hard one to take, but what can you do? I’m here on SmackDown. I’m gonna make the best of it.” (quotes courtesy of Colin Tessier)