If that's your only showstopper you can change that in settings. Look up Raise to Wake[1] and Notifications[2] in Settings.
I'm usually using Theatre Mode which keeps the screen off until an alarm or I wake it up and have pretty much all notifications off. I still get heavy use of the watch itself for timers, reminders, calendar, tracking workouts and health stats and whatnot so I'm very happy with it.
[1] - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/watch/apd748b87e2a/wat...