Fossil watch won’t connect

Here’s the story:

I got a Fossil smartwatch about a year ago. Love it. Worked great with my iPhone XS.

We went on vacation a few weeks ago and the phone took an accidental swim. Total loss. Insurance provided a new one, again iPhone XS.

Restored from iCloud backup. All great. Except the watch will not connect to my phone. At all. Bluetooth works with all other expected devices after backup (earbuds, both cars, speakers, etc.).

It will connect to my wife’s iPhone. So not a watch issue. It’s updated.

I’ve deleted and reinstalled the Wear OS app the watch requires about a dozen times. I’ve reset the watch to factory settings at least that many times. It won’t connect.

When I go through the process, the watch will receive a pairing request from the phone, which always matches. When I say to accept and pair, the phone says it can’t connect in about half a second. I’ve literally tried this dozens of times.

It fees like there’s some sort of Bluetooth setting in the phone that I can’t get to preventing the connection. Is there some residual connection from the previous phone stored in iCloud?

It’s really frustrating. And I’ve tried everything I can think of or find online. Any suggestions?