All Elite Wrestling’s roster is without a number of its top stars at the moment. Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks remain absent due to suspension, Adam Cole and CM Punk are on the shelf with injuries, and Malakai Black and Buddy Matthews are taking a leave of absence. Despite this, the promotion has still been able to regularly pull seven figures in viewership without any of the aforementioned names.
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One of AEW’s originals might be looking to add his name to that list of stars on sabbatical. Speaking to Renee Paquette on The Sessions, Darby Allin revealed he’s felt the need to “disappear” from AEW TV so the fans could miss him.
“Sometimes in wrestling, you have to go away for people… I think people take a lot of wrestlers for granted with the s–t they do in the ring. I haven’t been off AEW since I started,” Allin said (h/t Fightful). “I’ve had a two or three week break, but I haven’t been gone for more than a month since AEW started. There was a time in the spring where I felt like I needed to disappear.
“It’s weird, I feel like people take a lot of granted and I feel like I have to disappear. Maybe, I’m hoping I blow up in a Jeep one day [laughs]. I just have to disappear and be gone, really f–k off and be gone. In the spring, I feel like I was just floating around.”
The former TNT Champion pointed to an episode of AEW Dynamite where he saw the crowd turn on someone he thought was immune to boos.
I remember a moment last year, it was the casino ladder match. The people on the ladder were Jon (Moxley) and Hangman (Page). Hangman just came back from having a kid and the crowd in Philly was turning on Jon,” Allin continued. “It was weird. The fans were like, ‘Come on Hangman!’ I was like, ‘These fans don’t give a s–t.’ I never thought the fans were going to boo Jon, ever. Then Jon went off, came back, and he’s been on this crazy run.”
While Allin knows he has be apart of some timeless moments in AEW, he recognizes that professional wrestling has a significant amount of recency bias.
“People would say, ‘Oh, you wrestled CM Punk in his first match back. You have all these pivotal moments.’ Then they’re like, ‘Darby kind of fell off. Darby is not being used right. Daby’s not this, Darby’s not that.’ I was just trying to maneuver around and stay relevant without disappearing,” Allin said. “It’s the ultimate challenge. I’ve been there since the beginning of TV and I’ve never had that consistent time off. Sometimes, you just have to remind a motherf–ker who you are and jump off something huge. I’m extremely happy, in the ring and outside the ring. I think everything happens for a reason. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m going to go to outer space and purposefully not come back.”
