In a recent interview with Inside The Ropes, former WWE superstar Harry Smith (akaDavey Boy Smith Jr.) discussed several topics, including initial plans for his return to the company last year.

“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.

I was kind of forgotten about, I came to TV one or two times, I was waiting to come back and then they called, John Laurinaitis said he wasn’t a fan of it, 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 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.”

The interview is available in full at this link.