When Paul “Triple H” Levesque announced that not only was Adam Pearce being promoted to the role of RAW General Manager, but Nick Aldis was coming in to fill the same role on SmackDown, it turned heads around the professional wrestling industry.

Suddenly, one of the biggest names on the free agent market, a man who held the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for an astounding 1,309 days over two runs has been signed, and not only was he out as a wrestler, but he immediately made his presence known by acquiring Kevin Owens from RAW as part of the Jey Uso trade, effectively ending his tag team with Sami Zayn after an incredibly successful past six months.

Sitting down for a special Digital Exclusive segment with Cathy Kelley after SmackDown, Aldis explained his thought process behind acquiring KO and why he feels it could be very good for SmackDown and maybe less good for RAW too.

“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,” Nick Aldis explained to Cathy Kelley.

“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.”

On paper, Aldis' decision to bring over KO does two things: It adds a former Universal Champion to the SmackDown roster, and it removes an Undisputed Tag Team Championship-winning team from RAW, as Zayn will likely now feel very disheartened by the loss of his friend, as Adam Pearce suggested could happen in conversation with Uso when the deal was done. With Cody Rhodes and Uso now allowed to travel to both brands while Zayn and Owens are stuck apart, this has the potential to add some nice drama to the Red Brand, which is nice for Aldis as an outside observer.

Nick Aldis revealed his thought process before signing with WWE.

Before signing with WWE to become an on-screen authority figure, Nick Aldis was moonlighting as a backstage promoter, where he was learning the ins and outs of the business alongside the likes of Robert Roode.

Discussing what it was like to try his hands at the backside of the industry in an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Aldis explained why he was interested in trying his hand at producing and how the process was going roughly a month before his debut.

“They just invited me to come and see how everything works and shadow as a producer and just sort of be part of the meetings and oversee the whole television operation. Which is, I mean, I've done a lot, I've worn a lot of hats. I think people who have followed my career, particularly in the last few years know that, in addition to wrestling, I was wearing a lot of hats behind the scenes at my last place,” Nick Aldis said via WrestleZone.

“So, I certainly don't feel like it's a completely new sort of situation for me. Having said that, there's pro wrestling, and then there's WWE. So you know, just taking in just the sheer sort of volume of the operation, and the number of people involved in that this, the scale of everything is like, just that alone has been the basis of like, my time so far.”

So, with Aldis now the General Manager of SmackDown, the fans want to know: Is he finished with professional wrestling? Well, according to “Magnus” himself back in September, his answer was far from definitive.

“But it's all very much a sort of handshake situation at the moment. Very much a, ‘Hey, why don't you come in and see how all this works? See, if you like it.' I will say this. They've been very, very good to me, and very, very accommodating. As far as they've said, ‘Look, this is as much about whether you like it.' Now, where that goes, I don't know, and I'm okay with that,” Aldis said.

“Like, it's tough, with the internet and social media, because people want to put this sort of definitiveness on everything. And this finality like, oh, that's it. He's with WWE. That's it, game over. And so now, people say are you not wrestling anymore? Have you retired? Are you not wrestling? I mean, even the boys are saying that, are you done wrestling? And it's like, slow down.”

Welp, there you go, folks; Aldis is going to wrestle a match at some point in the future, and when that day comes, it'll likely get a massive pop, unless, of course, he decides to switch over to being a heel authority figure who uses his power for his own means.