Back on his own, AEW's Allin ready to scale Everest

If the past few months have been a whirlwind for Darby Allin, then what’s coming next might just be a hurricane.

Fresh off of participating in Sting’s retirement match at the Revolution pay-per-view earlier this month, the All Elite Wrestling star is set to begin a climb of Mount Everest at the end of March.

If you’re at all familiar with the 31-year-old Allin’s in-ring style, that he is about to scale the world’s tallest mountain can’t come as a surprise. Look no further than the March 3 match in which he teamed with Sting to take on the Young Bucks (Nick Jackson and Matt Jackson). The signature spot saw Allin ascend a ladder in the middle of the ring in an attempt to deliver a Swanton Bomb on the prone Matt Jackson through a pane of glass supported by folding chairs. Jackson managed to get out of the way, leaving Allin to go through the glass on his own, crumpling into a bloody heap.

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Almost miraculously, Allin required only 12 stitches and was able to finish the match. It was another signature bump for Allin who’s made a career of risky spots in his matches that make other performers blush.

But Allin’s style isn’t without its detractors. He’s routinely criticized by those within the industry as reckless. Following Revolution, long-time wrestling booker Jim Cornette called him “a complete idiot.” Former World Championship Wrestling president Eric Bischoff called the spot “flat-out stupid.” Still, Allin remains completely undeterred.

“I get a kick out of people [knocking me] because there’s a lot of wrestlers who get more messed up on a suplex than I have from anything,” Allin told TSN.ca. “If you look at my track record, I’m never beat up. Like stitches aren’t anything. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, and you’ll see I’ll keep wrestling longer than anybody who plays it safe and that’s my plan on that. But yeah, climbing up there and jumping off is kinda like an out-of-body experience you get only when you risk your life at points [laughs]. It’s fun, man. I had a blast.”

Allin (real name Samuel Ratsch), who lives a straight edge lifestyle and doesn’t drink or use drugs, credits an unusually strong pain tolerance for his ability to withstand the bumps he takes, but says that he takes his physical well-being very seriously.

“I have such a high pain tolerance that, I dunno, it doesn’t hurt,” Allin said. “The next day, I woke up and there was a piece of glass still in me. I feel like I ask for the pain and I gotta deal with the pain. I don’t wanna be this guy who runs away from things that I put myself through. If I’m the one who chose to do it, I should be the one who has to live with it. But I feel great. I have such a high physical recovery regimen that I do at my house with a sauna, an ice bath, a LiveO2 breathing machine and all the yoga, everything like that. I feel incredible.”

The PPV match was the peak of several months of storytelling that began when Sting (real name Steve Borden) announced in November that he intended to retire from pro wrestling at Revolution after 40-plus years in the business.

Sting and Allin, his on-screen associate for the duration of his time in AEW, competed for the AEW World Tag Team Championships for the first time, defeating Ricky Starks and Big Bill for the titles in early February to set up their bloody encounter with the Jackson brothers in Greensboro, NC. Looking back on how the final match played out, Allin couldn’t be happier with the 20-plus-minute spectacle.

“It was amazing,” Allin said. “It was really amazing, the fact that when I got to the back and Sting said it was easily one of his top-three favourite matches of all-time. That’s what we were searching for, that’s what we were fighting for. To have that at the very, very end was just incredible. It was a great feeling, even though I was lying in a pool of blood all lacerated, I wouldn’t have changed a single thing.”

Allin says the last few months working with Sting once he put an end date on his career were particularly enjoyable.

“We just had a lot of fun and it didn’t feel like work for him, coming in there with his vision and doing everything he wanted to do,” Allin said. “I think the last few months were a culmination of our friendship over the last three years and just having fun. He’s done so much in wrestling and dealt with so many ups and downs, and this final month or so has just been the biggest up ever. To have his family there and everything, it was awesome to be part of.”

With Borden gone, Allin once again strikes out on his own. But the new path he intends to chart won’t begin in earnest until he returns from his climb.

“It’s kinda hard, but I feel like it’s perfect timing in a way because it’s a good time for me to dig down deep inside and remind myself what I’m capable of outside of the ring, which is something that is really, really challenging,” Allin said. “So yeah, I’m excited. The moment I come back I’ll feel [motivated] to remind everybody what Darby Allin is capable of.”

Before he leaves, though, Allin has a first singles match against “Switchblade” Jay White on this Wednesday night’s Dynamite. White is one of three former IWGP World Champions who have arrived in AEW in recent months along with Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada. While Allin acknowledges that the influx of talent at this calibre should have the AEW roster ready to fight for their spots, he believes the incumbent performers shouldn’t need any impetus to want to improve their standings.

“Even without those people coming in, you should step your game up,” Allin said. “You should be the absolute best version of yourself you physically can. I don’t think you have time for comedy routines. I don’t think you have time for people trying to make themselves laugh. I think you should be there on a mission, kicking ass every week with a point to prove because we do have a chip on our shoulder. We have the best wrestling in the world, and we need go show everybody. But now that those guys are here, those top talents – Okada, Ospreay, Jay White – of course, you should step your game up. And if you don’t want to? Get off TV. We don’t need you.”

Following the White match, Allin will have the opportunity to scratch the itch of scaling the 8,848.86-metre summit of Everest. The journey could take up to two months, depending on weather and health.

“Since last spring, it’s a thing I wanted to do,” The Seattle native said. “I feel like the more challenge you put your body through, the better a person you become in the end. It just breaks down mental barriers that kinda hold you back…when you start doing things that nobody else thought you could do, you just get mentally stronger and that’s exactly how I feel about everything that I’ve done up until this point. Once I come back down from Everest, it’s going to be a whole different beast with mental clarity. It’s like a vision quest of sorts. I’m excited.”

As grueling as what’s ahead will be, gearing up for the climb has been incredibly demanding in its own right for Allin.

“I’ve had about six months to train for it and in those six months, I’ve been through Kathmandu…I’ve climbed Aconcagua [in the Andes], which is one of the Seven Summits, I trained in France,” Allin said. “I have this breathing machine in my house that replicates the air on Everest. I’ve sat in ice baths for 25 minutes and pushed my body to the point of hypothermia. I’ve done so much in the last six months because they told me you can’t go up there without any experience and you need to pass all these tests. They gave me a list of tests and they said I passed with flying colours.

“And you gotta remember I did all that in the middle of doing all the crazy stuff in wrestling. I didn’t really get to take a break and dedicate all my time for Everest and training. I’ve done all of this in the middle of doing the craziest stuff possible in wrestling. I think that also helps with my training, keeping your body on edge and everything, because the moment I get up on that mountain training, I’m like ‘Oh, this is nothing compared to getting thrown through steel chairs.’ It’s fun, but I’ve definitely pushed myself to the limit with training and now I’ve just gotta do it.”

In his promo with White on the Mar. 5 edition of Dynamite, Allin said there was a chance he might never come back from his trip. His words weren’t empty. Over the years, hundreds of travelers have perished in their attempt to scale Everest. This is something of which Allin is well aware, but is he really prepared for the worst?

“Yeah, or else I wouldn’t do it,” Allin said with a laugh. “One of my trainers, the first thing he asked me was ‘Are you okay with dying?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah’ and he was like ‘Alright, that’s all I needed to know.’ That’s like the biggest thing because if you’re not ready to die, you shouldn’t be on that mountain. Like if your family or anybody is like ‘Don’t do it!’ and that’s weighing on you, you can’t have anything going through your head. You have to be 100 per-cent focused on the mountain. You can’t be distracted. So yeah, I’m excited because I just like the feeling of being able to do something like this, especially in the prime of my physical life. It’s not something where I’m gonna wait until I retire from wrestling to do.”

As for his potential pro wrestling retirement, Allin, who began his career in 2014, has said in the past that he doesn’t intend to pursue a long career in the business. While he didn’t expand on what that means exactly, he explained what will keep him around.

“I think at this point it just depends [on] if I’m actually having fun,” Allin said. “And I’m having the time of my life [right now]. I never wanted to be one of these guys that you see wrestling when they’re older because they have to because they were never good at saving their money and it’s all they’ve known. I wanna be a guy who’s doing it because they straight up love it. So, who knows? It just depends on where the wind takes me and I’m having fun right now.”

And when it is all said and done for Allin, he hopes he’s remembered as a person who blazed his own trail.

“Just a guy who did it his way and didn’t follow the stereotypes of what a wrestler should be, inside the ring and outside the ring,” Allin said. “Pushing the absolute limit and showing that if you have dedication, nobody can hold you down, period. Don’t listen to anybody’s stuff about how your life should be because everybody told me I should be working a bare minimum, minimum-wage job doing nothing with my life and if I had listened to those people, I wouldn’t be here today, that’s for damn sure.”

ON AEW DYNAMITE: BIG BUSINESS

- AEW World Championship match: Samoa Joe (c) vs. Wardlow (w/ Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, Matt Taven and Mike Bennett)

- The Elite ("The Rainmaker" Kazuchika Okada, Nicholas Jackson and Matthew Jackson) vs. AEW Continental Crown Champion Eddie Kingston and Death Triangle (Penta El Zero Miedo and "The Bastard" PAC) (w/ Alex Abrahantes)

- Darby Allin vs. ROH World Six-Man Tag Team Champion "Switchblade" Jay White

- Willow Nightingale (w/ Stokely Hathaway) vs. Riho

- FTW Champion Hook and Chris Jericho vs. The Gates of Agony (Bishop Kaun and Toa Liona) (w/ Prince Nana)