The peak of All Elite Wrestling is currently occupied by decorated veterans, but that mountain is held up by four pillars. In September 2021, Maxwell Jacob Friedman cut a now-famous promo where he outlined the foundation of AEW. MJF put himself alongside Jungle Boy, Sammy Guevara, and Darby Allin, stating that those four men would “keep pushing this company forward for the next couple of decades.” While all four of those men have been with AEW for the entire duration of AEW Dynamite, one did get a late start. Unlike MJF, Darby Allin did not wrestle at All In. Unlike Sammy Guevara and Jungle Boy, Darby Allin was not part of AEW Double or Nothing 2019. But unlike all his fellow pillars, Darby Allin’s first match put him in an immediate high profile spot.
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Allin wrestled Cody Rhodes at AEW Fyter Fest and while he didn’t pick up the victory, he didn’t lose either. Allin and Rhodes fought to a time-limit draw, which cemented him as one of AEW’s top underdog babyfaces on his first night with the company.ย
Allin leveraged that momentum to featured matches on AEW Fight for the Fallen and AEW All Out before becoming a prominent player on AEW Dynamite that fall. AEW had clearly invested in Allin, and that’s because Allin quite literally invested in AEW.
“At the time, I was signed with another little promotion. The moment I heard Cody was interested, long story short, I paid $12,000 to get out of my contract,” Allin told the DDP Snake Pit podcast. “I took a loan out and I remember I used to hit Cody up like every day, just blow his phone up, and he would never really answer.”
The former TNT Champion inked his AEW deal nearly two months before the company would host its inaugural show. While the product was completely unproven, it only took two words for Allin to know he was all in.
“All I heard, when they were promoting it, were the words ‘Creative Freedom.’ I was like, ‘That’s where I need to be,’” Allin continued.
Before he was All Elite, Allin was competing for EVOLVE Wrestling, which was an unofficial feeder system for WWE. The likes of Austin Theory, Gigi Dolan, and Joe Gacy all regularly worked for EVOLVE before signing with WWE, while contracted WWE superstars like the Street Profits, Ricochet, and Johnny Gargano would make the odd appearance on some of the independent promotion’s shows.
Around Spring 2019, Allin was reportedly being “groomed for NXT,” to which he had no interested.
“This was back when 205 Live was a thing,” Allin said. “I was like, hell f–king no, I’m not going there to do that. I don’t want to be put in a box.”
Three years later, and Allin has emerged as one of AEW’s most successful homegrown stars. He’s the first of the four pillars to win a championship, was trusted as CM Punk’s debut opponent, and has been paired with Sting for nearly two years now.
