AEW’s Darby Allin Reveals His Plans for His TNT Championship Reign, How He Creates Those Insane Video Promos

Darby Allin captured the TNT Championship at AEW’s Full Gear pay-per-view back on Nov. 7. The victory quickly turned into an emotional scene — not only did Allin finally get a win over Cody Rhodes that had eluded him for over a year, but it also marked the crowning of one of the AEW’s most popular home-grown stars as a champion. Allin will team with Rhodes in the main event of this week’s AEW Dynamite and sat down with ComicBook ahead of the show to reflect on his win.

“It feels like I got to hustle and get my ass to work, and I can’t sit on my ass and wait for people to tell me what to do. I got to do it myself,” Allin said, before reflecting on beating “The American Nightmare. “…That felt like a close the chapter of that book. I made my debut in AEW against Cody, and to lose three times straight to him, and finally, on the fourth time, which I think was the most important time, considering it was for that TNT Championship, I was able to pull out the victory.”

Allin said when it comes to his reign as TNT Champion he’ll gladly take on all comers. However, he doesn’t intend on adopting the same weekly open challenge schedule Rhodes implemented that saw wrestlers from in and out of AEW randomly step up.

“I’d be down. Anybody wants to step up I’m down,” Allin said. “If we do it differently then that’s fine [too]. But if anything, I really want to fight people when there’s a story going into it. I don’t like a bunch of one-off matches every time I want something that has some meaning and backbone to it. So Ricky [Starks], Brian [Cage], step up.”

As part of the build to that match, Allin uploaded a video promo of himself hitting a man wearing a Rhodes mask with a car.

This was merely the latest in a long line of unique video promos Allin has created, which have included him jumping off bridges, placing himself inside of body bags and lighting things on fire. Allin said the inspiration for those promos comes from trying to break away from the norm.

“Because I feel like wrestling, and wrestling promos, at times can be very mundane and very boring and repetitive,” Allin said. “And ain’t nobody seeing the shit that I’m doing, and I’m going to keep it that way, because no one has the balls to do what I’m doing outside of the ring.”

Allin said nobody in AEW has shot down any of his ideas for these stunt videos — usually because they don’t know about it until after he’s already filmed it.

“No, because sometimes I just don’t tell them until I show them the vid,” Allin said. “So a lot of times people can’t see what I’m up to. Like when I jumped off the bridge. It’s like, “Hey man, I’m here. I’m alive. I’m walking around now. So hopefully we can use these.”

Allin was in a chapel while conducting the interview, and while he didn’t reveal what the stunt would be, he did admit to nearly setting himself on fire by accident.

“I melted my, I don’t know, just a little hole right here. I accidentally melted my clothes,” Allin said, pointing out a burn spot on his front.”

This week’s AEW Dynamite airs live at 8 p.m. EST on TNT. Check out the lineup for this week’s episode below: