Darby Allin explains how his involvement in the 2024 AEW Double or Nothing Anarchy in the Arena match came to be.
Darby Allin is borderline superhuman.
He broke his foot in March which led to a postponement of his planned climb of Mount Everest, a climb that he wasn't even sure if he would make it back from. While out with his injury, he was hit by a bus in New York City on April 27, suffering a broken nose in the process.
Still, he returned to AEW programming on May 15's AEW Dynamite to replace the injured Eddie Kingston and team with Bryan Danielson and FTR's Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood and represent AEW in the fight against The Elite's Kazuchika Okada, Matthew Jackson, Nicholas Jackson, and Jack Perry at Double or Nothing.
Speaking with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp in an interview ahead of the pay-per-view, Allin revealed that he was in the process of helping his dad move into a new home when he heard that Eddie Kingston would not be cleared and decided to call Tony Khan to see if a plan could be made to put him into the match.
"I’m not feeling great. I’m feeling horrible. Honestly, I was on a cross-country road trip with my dad and mom because I was going to help my dad retire and finally move him into the house that I got him in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a cross-country road trip, we’re driving and halfway through the country. We’re in Montana at this point. I hear that Eddie Kingston can’t make it. I pull over, I call Tony Khan and I say, ‘I don’t know what it’s going to take, but if I can get cleared from my doctor, it’s my foot doctor and my nose doctor, to be in this match, can we make it happen?’ He said, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ I’m on the road trip. I start in Seattle, I’m 12 hours into it, I flip a bitch, and I start driving back to Seattle because that’s where Dynamite was on Wednesday. I’m driving 12 hours back the opposite way and I’m trying to get cleared while I'm going," he said. "At the same time, I’m thinking, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Enjoy your time off. There is literally no rush. Move your parents in. Enjoy your time off.’
"No, I felt so compelled to have to be there. It was weird. I drove 12 hours, literally no sleep, showed up, and got cleared right when I was getting to the building. I was still in my walking boot. That was the first day I took it off, when I got to Dynamite. I was literally coming right down to the wire to see what the hell was going to happen. I still don’t know what’s going to happen. I haven’t bumped. I haven’t ran the ropes. I have a limp. My nose is killing me. I got medically cleared, alright, cool, I don’t have to do any of these tests. Let’s just find out what’s going to happen Sunday at the pay-per-view," he continued. "Going into Anarchy in the Arena, which is a psychotic match, to find out how I’m feeling Sunday, it’s going to be an interesting ride. The mental pain of sitting by and watching these shows, knowing I couldn’t do anything to be part of them, it was killing me. If I have 1% chance to be there on Sunday, that’s all I need. It was coming down to the wire. I could’ve shown up to Seattle and not been medically cleared, but we got it. I called my nose doctor in Atlanta and my foot doctor in California and everything was good to go. They told me to be careful. They don’t know anything about wrestling. If I showed them a clip of Anarchy in the Arena, they probably shift things."
Darby says he called Tony Khan on the night prior to Dynamite well he was in Yellowstone National Park with his dad. Darby says anyone who's surprised by his appearance should be because he wouldn't have believed that he was heading to Seattle on the morning prior to his call with Tony.
"Tuesday night. I was in Yellowstone National Park with my dad for 12 hours doing a tour. I was there for 12 hours and then I said, ‘Okay, I’m coming to Seattle, we’re driving right now.’ I got no sleep. I was up for 24 hours doing this trip to get there. There were no flights out of Bozeman, Montana that would get me to Seattle in time. What do you do? You just drive it. It was rough, but I got through. If anybody is surprised, that’s reasonable, because I was surprised. If you told me Tuesday morning I was going to be going to Seattle, I would have been like, ‘No, I’m not. I’m at Yellowstone National Park enjoying my time off.’ Next thing I know, ‘Let’s go.’ I’m so sporadic, I’ll literally jump in a car and drive wherever to make something happen. It was definitely crazy," he said.
During the AEW Double Or Nothing media call, Tony Khan commented on Darby being in the match, noting that it was a case of great minds thinking alike.
"The Darby thing was a case of great minds think alike. I spent a lot of time with him, and we are complete opposite and of, sometimes, a very similar brain and arrive at a lot of the same thoughts differently. Our thoughts and interests outside of pro wrestling is very different and the way we spend our time is very different, but one thing we have in common is we’re both up late at night. That’s when we probably do 90% of our talking. I reached out to him one night, and like we do so often, he read my mind. I texted him to ask, ‘Hey, how are you doing? How is it going with the injury?’ He responded immediately, ‘I’m doing good. I can fill in an substitute for Eddie Kingston as the partner on Team AEW if you’d like.’ It was what I was thinking, but before I asked the question, he answered it. There were a lot of people that wanted to step up and be part of Team AEW. There were a lot of names that I think would have been great and there were a lot of people that could have stepped into this role and done excellent with it. For AEW, looking at where we were last week, and for this match, and taking everything into account, Darby Allin was the perfect choice. There were a lot of people that would have been excellent if Darby had not been able to get cleared. If he had not gotten cleared, I would not have pushed him in there, even if he had wanted to, which I think he would have wanted to if he had not gotten cleared. I wouldn’t have been able to do it. It was really cool how he wanted to step up and before I got the question out, he answered it."
Going into this match, Bryan Danielson claims that doctors have told him he will need surgery soon. Learn more about that here.
Check out the full card for AEW Double or Nothing here.
Check out the full interview with Darby Allin embedded above.
