Darby Allin (@DarbyAllin) is a professional wrestler currently signed to AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast Creative Studio in Hollywood, CA to discuss climbing  Mount Everest, crashing through a pane of glass during Sting’s last match, getting launched onto the announce table by Claudio Castagnoli, whether he sees himself becoming AEW World Champion, whether he thinks his spots ever go too far, winning the TNT Championship, breaking his foot in the ring, getting hit by a bus in New York, and more!

What do you feel like your relationship with fear is like?

“I love it. Honestly, goes back to when I was in middle school. I would look at the wall in my room and just think my whole life’s gonna amount to nothing. I was so just life’s over. There’s nothing to look forward to. I had no confidence in the world at all, but the more fear [I had], I went straight on and started doing crazy stuff. It gave me all this confidence, and it made me believe anything was possible. So fast forward all these years later, I’m doing the most crazy stuff, like Everest and everything, but I feel the most confident and I feel the most at peace with myself. So that’s why I constantly love fear.”

7,000 people have climbed Mount Everest. That’s it.

“Yeah, I don’t know. It just puts things into perspective, kind of how small your problems are, what you think is so big really doesn’t mean a thing. It’s very humbling when you’re up there, because it’s hard to have an ego when you’re fighting for your life on a daily basis. Because you don’t care about how you look, you don’t care about how you smell. You just want to survive. So it’s pretty cool to be in that type of energy.”

There is a real possibility you could die up there. Did you say your goodbyes before you went up there? Did that hit you?

“Yeah, absolutely. I climbed with my mom and my brother to base camp, and the base camp hike, to a lot of people it’s no joke, it takes like 10-12 days. The elevation is like 17,000 [feet]. But the reality hit me when my mom and my brother were leaving base camp, and now I had to stay behind to actually go for the summit, and I was going to be there for another month after they left, but when I saw them walking away, the reality hit, oh sh*t, this might be the last time you see them. Then it just thought about, this might be the last time you’ve seen anybody. I was like, Oh crazy. So I went in my tent and I cried, and I filmed a little vlog about it and stuff, being like, there’s no way I’m gonna die on this mountain. I’m gonna summit, then I’m going to come back down and see a lot of people. So it was a commitment I made to myself when I was up there.”

What was the reason you wanted to do it?

“What I said earlier, I wanted to tell myself I was capable of anything, because you find yourself on this hamster wheel and wrestling. There’s no off-season. It’s all year long. And sometimes you feel like you’re living your life for somebody else. I wanted to really find out who I was going to be on the other side of Everest, and I didn’t want to live my life for somebody else. I wanted to really prove to myself what I was capable of. Because it goes back to the politicking and everything like that and the egos. I can’t stand it.”

Growing up, how does wrestling get into this?

“I always remember wrestling being there. I always remember it being in the background. I remember, we’re going to talk about Jeff Hardy, but I remember when I was in kindergarten, I’d watch Jeff Hardy, and then I would climb on top of top of my piano, and there’d be a concrete floor, and front flip off and just knock the sh*t out of myself, just rolling around, but it’s always there. It was always a form, like an outlet to entertain, plus just to have an excuse to go crazy in front of a live crowd.”

Was Jeff Hardy your guy growing up?

“Him, Mick Foley, a lot of those guys really spoke to me as a kid, especially coming from skateboarding and stunts and wildness, they weren’t your traditional wrestlers, so they were very appealing in that sense.”

Are you in any pain as you sit here right now?

“No. I’m not lying. I’m completely straight edge. I don’t take pain pills, I don’t take anything. I asked for this, and I want to deal with it mentally and with the human brain, and all the meditating and everything that I do, I feel like I can deal with anything.”

When you started talking about this match with Jeff Hardy, are both of you guys going all right, how are we gonna one-up each other? 

“For the first time in my career it did feel like I was calling a match with myself, and that was a fun feeling. Because originally it was supposed to be just a straight-up wrestling match, but nobody wants to watch Darby Allin and Jeff Hardy trade wrist locks. We got to bend the rules a little bit. Then one thing led to another, and it was for the Owen Hart Tournament. So, all right, this is relaxed rules, whatever that means. And the next thing you know, we’re out here talking about, all right, I’m gonna do this. And then he’s like, I’m gonna do this, and it’s just super fun, because, to me, I love traditional wrestling, I love World of Sport, I love all of that. Not a lot of people would think I do, but I am obsessed with all that technical wrestling. But you got to think of the big puzzle of what AEW is and where you can fit on that, what makes it different. I’m not going to go in there and be like, oh, I want to be a technical wrestler, because you take a guy like Danielson, he’s the best at that. So I’ll be the guy who will be willing to go places no one’s willing to go physically. That’s where I fit in, and everything like that. So it was just super fun, because you got that energy match with somebody like Jeff, and now you’re like, Oh no, this is a car crash. This is everything I would love if I was watching TV flipping through the channels. Oh my god. It was a really great experience.”

You jumped off a ladder onto Jeff Hardy, and then there were chairs there too. Talk me through that spot.

“Well, I don’t know. I felt like it wasn’t so much of live up to the hype of what people expected, it was to live up to the hype that I expected. So it’s like, man, because I expect a lot out of myself any night of the week. I don’t save any big things for a pay-per-view. I’ll be going ballistic on Dynamite, Collision. It don’t matter. I’ll be going ballistic every night. But with this Jeff Hardy match, I was like, Dude, we gotta go, and all I kept thinking is, all right, there’s this ladder, and then there’s a stack of chairs. I don’t know where it came from, but it just seemed like the most logical step. But also, I’ve never seen it done before, because everyone’s like, how are you supposed to even land that safe? I honestly don’t know.” 

You don’t think that through?

“No. And also I’m very chill with going to the hospital and breaking things. I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me, which I think, in the long run, actually, that helps me, because when you’re afraid of stuff, that’s when you get hurt. But if you just go with the flow, like it’s nice and loose, you’d be surprised what your body can handle.” 

Have they ever told you that’s too much? We don’t want to do that. 

“The Sting spot, easily, the Sting spot. [So this is off the ladder through the glass?] Yeah. I remember the moment I hit it, my adrenaline was just going through the roof and the referee comes up, ‘How are you feeling?’ I feel good. He’s like, oh sh*t. My insides got sliced into the glass, and then he’s like, ‘We got to bring you to the back.’ I was like, There’s no way you can bring me to the back. So if you see me come back into the match at the very end, I’m wrapped in duct tape. And I was like, just wrap it up, I only have one more spot. So let’s finish strong. I can’t go to the back. I remember Tony saying that could have been really bad.”

You splatted when you hit, it looked like the glass barely breaks your fall. Did it hurt?

“Surprisingly not. But a couple of weeks later, I’m still pulling glass out of myself. I don’t know. It wasn’t like, oh my God, that was miserable. I was like that was chill. If you look back at when I did the front flip off of the ladder onto Jeff, I whisper in his ear when we’re laying down, I’m like, that was fun, just to let him know, because a lot of these spots, when you do some crazy stuff, you don’t know how the person you’re wrestling is going to be after it. So it’s kind of good to give them the whole like, Dude, this is cool.”

What do you say to those people that don’t like the way that you wrestle. 

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s so much different things to like or not like. You don’t have to pay no attention to me if you don’t like it, just go complain about something. There’s just nothing to say. I’m just gonna keep doing what I do.”

Do you look at your style and think that you will have to adapt it?

“I think everybody has to shift their style to a degree, absolutely. But that’s the beauty of wrestling, to me, is you can’t have a pro athlete playing NBA or NFL at 64 or a skateboarder. But you can have Sting going out there having a rememberable retirement match at 64, so there’s ways around it, obviously. But also you got to look at Sting. He was jumping off balconies, which is something he never did in his early years. He was doing that at the very end. So there’s ways to keep the craziness but also, you know, mirror it. I’m not going to be able to run as fast or do my dives as hard as maybe I want to. But that doesn’t mean I can’t jump off 30-foot balconies. There’s just ways around it.”

Have you seen the comparisons to Spike Dudley?

“Yeah, I don’t really see it to be honest, because I’m way more of a wrestler, wrestler. I don’t feel like Spike was ever a technical wrestler.”

I think it’s because he took some nasty bumps too:

“Definitely, but I definitely feel like I’m way more of a wrestler’s wrestler than that. I sh*t you not. I feel like I could out-wrestle a lot of people from a technical standpoint, but ain’t nobody want to see Darby Allin do a lot of technical wrestling. But when I do, it’s super fun, because I feel like people always forget that I know how to do this. But I got a ring at my house, and I train all the time. So, yeah, I don’t personally see it, but that’s just the nature of the business. I feel like a lot of wrestling stuff is very small-minded. You think about, oh, he’s with Sting because they have face paint. It’s like, Dude, it goes way beyond that. I feel like, yeah, a lot of people are very small-minded in wrestling.” 

You also have a win over Gunther:

“It was so fun. It was incredible. I just remember I was supposed to originally wrestle him a month prior, but I had this crazy, crazy injury where I was bleeding from the brain, and it was like a double shot where I wrestled in the morning, and I was supposed to wrestle Gunther at night. It was two shows in one, then the morning show, I hit the concrete on my head so hard that I just started feeling everything start to get quiet and feel like something was swelling, and I could barely hear people. I was like, Oh, this ain’t normal. Went to the hospital and you’re bleeding from the brain, we had to put you under and stuff like that. So it’s pretty crazy. But imagine if I didn’t go to the hospital, I probably would have died that night against Walter. But yeah, fast forward, I end up having the singles match with him, and it was incredible. It was so fun because when I’m in there, I love being in the ring with guys where you can actually be lost in the moment, guys like Gunther, Brody King, all these people, feels like I’m in a real fight. That was incredible.” 

Then there’s Claudio launching you from the ring through the announce table.

“Like I said earlier, a lot of it’s like, Okay, what’s something that’s [crazy]? Because there’s a lot of craziness in AEW, a lot. I actually love watching people push the boundaries. But I’m also trying to be like, what’s a bump that no one would want to take? I’m looking around. I was like this guy is strong as sh*t, just throw me. Just chuck me. I don’t know there’s nothing to it. It’s just kind of rag doll it.”

Did you guys both know that he was gonna be able to hit the announce table?

“Not 100%, but he’s so strong. I’m like, whatever happens, happens. Let’s just go, wing it. Because if I come short and I actually hit the corner of the table it might look cooler, you don’t know. But it was super fun.”

You’ve been thrown onto the stairs a lot!

“The worst one is definitely the one with Christian Cage at WrestleDream. If you watch that back, that one’s the worst. Way worse than the PAC one. My head is like that far away from actually breaking my neck on those stairs.” 

Not only did you get set on fire, you also set people on fire. You set Jack Perry on fire. You set Jon Moxley on fire. You had a flamethrower. It’s a wild spot!

“I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes Darby has to get his revenge. He can’t just clearly get his ass kicked every single night.”

Was there a point where you broke your foot, when that first trip to Everest got put on hold, were you worried that it wasn’t gonna happen?

“No, absolutely not. The very first thing I did when I was in the hospital is I called Tony and I said, promise me that I can do this next year. Because Everest was such a spiritual journey for me that I felt like I needed to do it. Then he’s like, yeah, absolutely. So once I got that promise, I was like, okay, cool. I’m just gonna hit it harder and train my ass off even more. But yeah, it was incredible. I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

Do you have the goal of being AEW World Champion one day?

“I don’t know. It’s a weird question. It’s something I talked to Sting about. I never really cared about championships. Care more about just good storylines. To me, that’s where I feel like my head is on that thing. Would it be cool to be the face of a company? Yes, absolutely, considering I do feel like I best represent what AEW can give. Because you take a guy like Darby Allin, where would have Darby fit in the grand scheme of pro wrestling if it wasn’t for AEW? But you just see, hey, here’s a guy, be you.”

Do you think about if, if Jackass had been around, 10 years ago, like just starting how different your life might have looked like. You might have been the star of Jackass instead of a pro wrestler?

“You never know. Honestly, because back then I was just going crazy on my skateboard, doing all these stunts and stuff like that. I was trying to go the Evil Knievel route, because I had no confidence to being a wrestler. But then, with all the craziness, I think I can do way more for wrestling, because people aren’t willing to go the lengths I’m willing to go. I am not just saying that. It’s not a catchphrase. I do believe there’s no one in the world of wrestling that is willing to go the places I’m willing to go, physically, mentally. I love a challenge.” 

What is Darby Allin grateful for?

“My health, my family and AEW.”

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