Harry Smith Almost Had New Name and Gimmick In WWE

In an interview with Inside the Ropes, Harry Smith (formerly Davey Boy Smith Jr) revealed that before he was released by the WWE, the company almost gave him a new name and gimmick on the main roster. He was hired back and worked a dark match, before allegedly being set to be on Smackdown. However, that never happened and he was let go last year.

He said: “John Cone said ‘the next time you are going to come to SmackDown it’s going to be your debut, you did really good [in your dark match], Vince really liked it.’ So I was like, great, I’ll just wait and then they asked me to do a dark match in Tampa and they were going to do some backstage vignettes with me and my father’s leather vest. They were going to show that for the documentary, and then luck be have it I ended up having COVID, really bad, so I was kind of out of commission for about three weeks or a month. Then I was kind of forgotten about, I came to TV one or two times… I was waiting to come back and then they called and Johnny [ Laurinaitis] said he wasn’t a fan of it [his release], he wasn’t happy with the list of names he was given but it wasn’t from him. I don’t know what they were waiting for, the only thing I was told was, I was going to be debuting on SmackDown and they were going to call me ‘The Stampede Stud’. It just never happened, it wasn’t my fault. I showed up more than in shape. I saw Vince and he was like ‘oh you’re looking good kid’.“