Can i update watch series 1 to WatchOS6 to pair with Iphone with iOS14.7.1?

I have an iPhone 8 Plus running the latest version of iOS (14.7). I am running into a problem when trying to pair my old apple watch. It is requesting that in order to pair my watch, that i update my iphone software before i can update the watch software. My iOS is up to date and it won't push the WatchOS update, making pairing not possible. Anyone know of ways around this?

I am aware that the series 1 watch will not be allowed to update to WatchOS7. Is there a way to manually update to OS6 so it can pair with my phone.

Seems a bit dumb to make a perfectly working product unusable/un-updatable.