iwatch not syncing to new iPhone

I went through the set up and all of that and then I got to the pairing of my iWatch series 6 to my iPhone 12 Pro Max. My iwatch won't sync because, when I go into the iwatch app on my phone to pair, it gives me the little box to show my watch to sync it and my watch still shows the normal face, so it won't pair. It tells me to make sure its not paired to any other devices and I checked. My old phone is no longer paired with my watch, but it still won't pair with my new phone. The only thing I haven't tried yet is resetting the watch to factory and pairing anew. I can't do that yet as a lot of the apps are still downloading on my new phone and I'd rather wait until that's done. Any advice?