Davey Boy Smith Jr. was going to be called 'Stampede Stud' prior to WWE release

Davey Boy Smith Jr. was set to return to WWE under a new name before he was released. 

The 36-year-old wrestled a dark match for the promotion on July 16, 2021 but was later let go that November without having appeared on television. During an interview with Inside the Ropes, Smith says he was set to wrestle under the name "The Stampede Stud" before being part of talent cuts that fall. 

Following his dark match, Smith says he spoke to Senior Manager of Talent Relations for WWE, John Cone, about his future in the company. 

“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."

Smith continued to say that his return got stalled after he had a bad case of COVID-19. He said this led to his return falling through the cracks.  

"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.”

Smith is currently wrestling in the NWA as part of the Commonwealth Connection tag team with Doug Williams. They will challenge La Rebelion for the NWA World Tag Team Championships on Saturday at Alwayz Ready. Smith and Williams made it to the finals of the Crockett Cup back in March. They've since won two straight matches on episodes of Powerrr.