Davey Boy Smith Jr. Reveals Scrapped WWE Return Gimmick

Davey Boy Smith Jr.'s return to WWE was a curious thing, with the former DH Smith re-signing with the company in 2021, and departing in November after wrestling just one match - a dark match before SmackDown.

Now wrestling in the NWA as Harry Smith, Smith revealed to Inside the Ropes that WWE had lined up a new name and gimmick for the former tag team champion before his return was scrapped:

“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,” said Smith

As for the new gimmick? Well it had ties to his father, and to the Hart side of the family:

“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,’” continued Smith.