And yet, even with the odds stacked against him, Allin was determined to thrive (or fail) by doing things authentically his way.
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“The first day of wrestling school I said, ‘I’m going to make it in this wrestling world like Darby Allin, or I’m going to fail like Darby Allin. But I’m not going to change anything,'” he tells Uncrowned.
“I set the bar for myself, like, hey, I’ve been homeless. I’ve done all these things. I’m not afraid to go back to that. And if I have to commit my soul to do it, I don’t want to, I’m not, I can’t, you can’t make me… So to get to the top of where I am without changing a single thing is literally everything I’ve ever wanted in this entire life.”
Allin says it took everything to get to the top of this proverbial mountain and win the AEW World Heavyweight Championship. The shocking coming full circle moment came when Allin took the belt from his old foe, MJF, on the April 15 edition of “AEW Dynamite” in his home state of Everett, Washington.
Just 10 minutes from where he went to wrestling school, Allin found himself driving down the streets that carry both his failures and his successes that night on his way to Everett’s Angel of the Winds Arena. For Allin, those same streets now led him to the most important moment of his career.Advertisement
As he wandered the backstage area before the show, it was fitting that his former tag team partner and mentor, wrestling legend Sting, sent him to the ring with a final message: “It’s not show time, it’s your time.”
“Having (Sting) there, I’ve told him before privately: I admire him outside of the ring like no other,” Allin says. “The fact that he got to the top of the sport, and that he was the most humble, coolest guy in the world, that’s all I ever wanted. I didn’t want to let ego or fame consume me, because this is just a 15-minute journey. I want to look in the mirror when this is all over, and now I’m looking back, and I feel like Sting is the quintessential man for that.
“He’s very ingrained. So having him there was amazing. It was amazing because he could see that I was taking notes from him and I wasn’t walking around like I was the king of the world afterwards. I’m so grateful for everything.”
(Ricky Havlik, AEW)
In any normal reality, none of this materializes between Allin and Sting.
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Sting’s wrestling career should be over after an injury suffered in 2015 put an unexpected end to his four-match stint in WWE. Absent from the game for over five years, any chance of seeing him in the ring again had seemingly gone.
But sometimes wrestling lives in an alternate universe, often appropriately referred to as a never-say-never business. At 61, Sting unexpectedly made the jump to AEW in 2020, pairing with Allin as two guys who had a lot more than face paint in common.
They both started with no money. Neither were the second generation fighters. They got into the business without much help, were sometimes forced to live out of their cars, and eventually both rose to the top of their respective promotions thanks to a combination of work ethic and sheer will.
Behind the scenes, Sting developed early impressions of Allin as someone who “lives, eats and breathes” professional wrestling.
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“He had the ability to be very credible in the ring and take risks,” Sting says. “We all know it to the point of saying, ‘Come on, Darby, what you’re doing here is crazy.’
“But he’s someone who puts his balls to the wall every day. It doesn’t matter if there are 150 people if he’s doing an independent show, or 20,000 people or 70,000 people. It’s the same no matter what happens.”
(Lee Sur, AEW)
That work ethic, and willingness to do whatever it takes to take AEW to the next level, was clear even in those early days, and it’s why Sting remained steadfast in his belief from the beginning that Allin would be a future world champion.
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“I had someone like Ric Flair who had the ability to make or break me. And I think he probably had the ability to do the same with Darby, even though we weren’t opponents, we were on the same team,” Sting says.
“But I saw something in him, he saw something in me and the rest just fell into place.”
About five years since their first match together, a lot has changed. Allin and Sting rode a 27-game winning streak until the icon’s final match — a perfect swan song in early 2024 for a Hall of Fame career that spanned nearly 40 years.
Allin remembers that people questioned Sting when he returned, asking him questions like what he had to prove and why he was coming back.
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With all the numerous qualities they share, perhaps the strongest is their mutual unwillingness to allow the universe to determine their destiny. While Allin did everything he could to control the development of his career, Sting took over the final years of his own career in a way we’ve never seen before.
“He had nothing to prove, and that night, in his last game, he went crazy. He didn’t call him on the phone,” Allin says.
“Every night you walk through this curtain, treat it like it’s your last, because who knows, it might be. So never make a phone call. That’s the work ethic I learned from him.”
(Lee Sur, AEW)
As Sting reflects on his journey in AEW, he says that there was no other person on Earth who could have been his tag team partner, who could have allowed him to do what he did in that final race.
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“I don’t know how else to say it, but I’m convinced that without Darby, maybe he could have had a good three-and-a-half or four-year career, but it wouldn’t have been the same magnitude. It wouldn’t have been as good. It wouldn’t have been as much fun,” Sting says.
“It seems like this is kind of like something ordained by God, because Darby was very quick to figure out what my strengths and weaknesses were. And of course, I knew his too. We worked together on that to help (each other). He would help me get through, I would help him get through. And even from the creative ideas, the in-ring stuff, the physical aspect of it all, it was just a great synergy that we both had together. Man, I’m convinced he’s the only guy who can do it. “.
Sting reflects on his time in AEW as “the best streak” and considers his retirement fight alongside Allin against the Young Bucks at AEW Revolution to be the best moment of his famous career.
“When people ask me, what was the best moment of your entire career? And all the big PPV matches, all the big stadiums, the sellouts, the attendance records and the PPV buy rates broken, and the biggest PPV in PPV history, Hulk Hogan and I in 1997,” Sting says.
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“It was the last match I had. It was Revolution, with AEW, with Darby. Ric Flair, who put me on the map to begin with, was there ringside. Even Ricky Steamboat was there. The Young Bucks, the biggest opponents. I mean, yeah, I picked them. And to have Darby as my tag team partner and go out like that, wow. Unbelievable. It was an incredible night.”
Allin’s time in the passenger seat next to Sting gave him a front-row view of the type of professional he always aspired to be. That journey lasted until Sting’s last night in AEW and beyond.
Sting says he spoke to Allin just days before the 33-year-old won the AEW World Title, and they shared a meaningful conversation in which Allin thanked him for sharing his humble approach to life and wrestling.
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They talked about the importance of treating everyone equally and never bragging about being the “big superstar.”
“I’m proud that he realized that and that he now has that focus and that mindset,” Sting says.
“And I hope that drives him even further forward, and that eventually some of the young people will come up to him, tell him the same things, and want to do what he did. ‘Oh, can you give me some advice?’ And he will have advice for them.”
(Ricky Havlik, AEW)
More than just what he’s seen behind the scenes, Sting raves about how much Allin has developed. He sees elements of the lessons he passed on to Allin during their time together, like how losing the right way can help you get over it. Or how taking a second to listen to the crowd and acknowledge them can help you develop a stronger relationship with your audience.
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It has seen Allin’s balance rise on the card simultaneously with achievements outside the ring such as climbing Mount Everest. And now it has seen him become the face of AEW and the world champion.
“He’s killing it. I mean, Mount Everest. I think he even wants to go to space. I’m serious,” Sting says.
“He has a leadership quality. I said to Tony Khan at one point, I said, I think he’ll end up running the company at some point or he might. But he has no interest in doing it at all. But he might be someone who could right the ship when you’re going off course.”
Allin is proud of what he has been able to accomplish on his own terms. Before he’s done, he hopes to evolve and move the world of professional wrestling to a space that no longer carries the stigmas of years past.
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“Break down all the walls, the stereotypes that a champion has to be a certain way and a champion has to fit a certain structure, and really lay the foundation for future generations,” Allin says of his ambitions.
“People who are watching at home, who may be in high school or whatever, and they have this dream deep down, but they don’t have the confidence. And then they can look at me and say, ‘Hey, if all you have to do is work hard and take risks, like really risk everything, then anything is possible.’ That’s what I want to leave behind more than anything.”
The journey as AEW’s torchbearer never ends. Allin has the will to live life to the fullest, taking absurd risks not for the fans, but for the thrill of having one foot on death’s door, as long as it moves the business forward, even incrementally.
“I don’t know what to say, man,” he continues.
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“I have a drive like no other, and I will stop at nothing until I get to where I want to be and where I want AEW to be as a company. Now here we are, so yeah, let’s keep going.”