Former WWE star Harry Smith (Davey Boy Smith Jr.) revealed plans to return to the company in 2021 during an interview with Liam Alexander-Stewart of Inside the Ropes.
“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 [McMahon] 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.’”
During my chat this afternoon with Davey Boy Smith Jr. AKA Harry Smith he revealed prior to his 2021 WWE release he was booked to debut on SmackDown under the name 'The Stampede Stud'
Check out the video below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/A6yHphWkID
— Liam Stewart (@LiamAStewart) June 8, 2022