AEW's Darby Allin keeps tempting fate — and coming back for more
Andreas HaleMay 20, 2026, 07:51 AM ET Close Andreas Hale is a combat sports reporter at ESPN. Andreas covers MMA, boxing and pro wrestling. In Andreas’ free time, he plays video games, obsesses over music and is a White Sox and 49ers fan. He is also a host for Sirius XM’s Fight Nation. Before joining…
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Andreas Hale
Multiple Authors
LOS ANGELES — Darby Allin’s mesh shirt and trench coat cannot fully hide the pinkish-purple bruises emerging on his body. Sitting at breakfast, just 12 hours removed from a tornado six-man tag-team match at AEW Revolution, the pro wrestler describes how one of those opponents the night before cautioned the spot Allin wanted to take in the ring would “kill” the 5-foot-8, 180-pounder.
He has heard this sort of thing, of course. This time, as Allin describes it, he’s standing on the ring apron just outside the ropes and makes a move for the adjacent corner. Clark Connors, one of the other competitors in All Elite Wrestling, sprints from the other side of the ring, dives through the ropes, spears Allin off the apron — and they crash to the floor.
.@ClarkConnors shuts down @DarbyAllin!
Watch #AEWRevolution LIVE on PPV! pic.twitter.com/sDMY3jubMW
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) March 16, 2026
“Connors was new to AEW, and it was his first pay-per-view, so he had to make an impact,” Allin told ESPN. “I’ve been there and know what it’s like to want to make an impact, so I thought I’d help him have his moment.”
After Connors has his moment at the expense of Allin, a fan jumps out of his ringside seat at Crypto.com Arena with both hands on his head and shouts: “How is he not dead yet?”
“I’ve used about all my nine lives,” Allin says, “so I have no answer to that.”
For Allin, the scene didn’t come close to going through a flaming table and having his scorched skin peel off onto the leather seat of his car on the drive home or taking a 10-foot dive off a ladder through a plate-glass shower door that left his insides visible. By Allin’s standards, the bump he took from Connors that night was tame.
The @BASTARDPAC just tossed @DarbyAllin off of the entrance ramp into FLAMING TABLES!
Watch #AEWDynamite Blood & Guts LIVE on TBS & HBO Max pic.twitter.com/jmEldgz5nH
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) November 13, 2025
Darby Allin goes through the glass!
Order #AEWRevolution on PPV right now!
🇺🇸: https://t.co/MpmTCyHt8n
🌐: https://t.co/Bc4ZSSvvNC@Sting | @DarbyAllin | @youngbucks pic.twitter.com/Ex87K3GBRD— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) March 4, 2024
For nearly his entire wrestling life, Samuel Ratsch has had a penchant for playing Double Dutch with the Grim Reaper. Whatever deal he made to stave off death has resulted in the survival of his Darby Allin wrestling persona through some of the most treacherous stunts imaginable.
From zip-tying his neck until he turned purple when he was 3, to doing a front flip off a piano onto concrete at 5, to being launched down a flight of concrete stairs in a wrestling match — and successfully climbing Mount Everest while along the way completing a skateboard kickflip at 20,958 feet — Allin consistently has found ways to tempt fate and come out the other side relatively unscathed. Sans a few bumps and bruises, Allin, now 33, has broken only three bones while wrestling.
In the violent theater of choreographed chaos known as professional wrestling, Allin is the proprietor of extraordinary risk, the daredevil descendant of Evel Knievel. “Please don’t die” chants from the fans are common during his matches. They’ve also accompanied the high-risk stunts he has shared with the world outside the ring.
“If the worst that is going to happen to me is dying, so be it,” Allin says. “It’s fine, but it’s not worth sitting by and watching this life go by and doing nothing interesting with it.”
BORN AND RAISED in Seattle in a two-parent home with two brothers, there were four things Darby Allin loved growing up: stunts, skateboarding, punk rock and pro wrestling. From his earliest memories, he knew he wanted to do one of those things for the rest of his life, but he couldn’t have predicted that his life would become an amalgamation of those interests.
Allin’s first real scrape with death came at age 5, when he survived a car crash that killed his uncle, who was driving while intoxicated, according to Allin. The incident pushed Allin into a straight-edge lifestyle devoid of drugs and alcohol to maintain clear-headedness, but it also shaped his fearless approach to life.
“Instead of shying away from the fire, I just kept going toward it until I could get into the fire because that pain is what made me feel alive,” Allin said.
His parents never understood why their son was so enamored with danger, but Allin wandered through his childhood, creating his own chaos to provide a dopamine injection to what he felt like was an aimless life.
“There’d be nights I’d be in the backyard in our house in Washington and I would have this huge gas tank and I’d be pouring it on a baked potato that I lit on fire so we [my brothers] could play actual hot potato at three in the morning,” Allin said of an incident during his teenage years. “And then the flames shot up in the gas tank while I was holding it in my hand and the gas tank blew up in my hand, broke my finger, burned the skin off my brother’s leg.
“My parents came out and they were just like, ‘He’s going to kill himself or do something insane.’ But that’s just because I was thinking my life was going to amount to nothing, so I needed to feel something.”
Pro wrestling made him feel something, which had always been on the periphery. It never felt like a career choice because of the bodybuilder physiques of WWE wrestlers at the time, until the diminutive 8-year-old saw Jeff and Matt Hardy in the infamous TLC match at WrestleMania 17 in 2001.
“[Jeff and Matt Hardy] definitely made me feel like it was possible because it wasn’t about their physique,” Allin said. “It was more about whatever they’re willing to endure for the crowd.”
After he graduated high school — weighing 118 pounds — Allin’s aspirations of being a pro wrestler were shot down by everyone, including his father, who told him to be “more realistic.”
Allin went to film school in Arizona but dropped out within months and worked odd jobs, such as washing dishes and stocking shelves at a 99 Cents Only store. One night while still in school, he attended an independent wrestling show and said it was “the worst wrestling you’ll ever see.” But people, including him, had paid to attend, and that’s when the light bulb went on.
“If people are paying to see this, maybe I should really give it a shot,” Allin said. “And I just said, ‘Screw it, dude. I’m just going to go all-in on this.'”
In 2014, Allin moved back to Seattle, lived in his car and found the Buddy Wayne Academy — a pro wrestling school. Allin was the smallest person in the school but was willing to use his body in ways that impressed Wayne, who worked in the WWE and WCW.
Wayne’s son, Nick, who is currently signed to AEW and was the youngest champion in the company’s history at 19, was 9 when he saw a skinny man with a footlong mohawk and toy cars super glued on his head walk into his father’s wrestling school.
“The second I laid eyes on him, I said to myself that he’s different,” Nick Wayne told ESPN.
While developing as a wrestler, Allin became a family friend who was heavily involved in Nick’s development, especially after Nick’s father died from a heart attack in 2017. “He was incredibly disciplined,” Wayne said, “and taught me how to live without fear as well as time being the most valuable thing on this earth that can’t afford to be wasted.”
Allin was at the school nearly daily, learning the basics to become a technically sound wrestler who applied his daredevil skills when necessary.
Samuel Ratsch adopted the ring name Darby Allin as a tribute to Darby Crash, frontman for the band The Germs, and punk icon GG Allin. Both were daredevil musical personas who died of drug overdoses. His half-painted face is a nod to the childhood car crash that claimed the life of his uncle.
“Half of me feels dead inside,” Allin said. “I live life with one foot in the grave.”
Allin quickly ascended the independent circuit, leaving fans in awe of his extreme style and breathtaking acts of violence while relying on his technically sound wrestling background.
All Elite Wrestling emerged in 2019 with a more freeing in-ring approach to pro wrestling, where Allin would feel right at home. Allin signed with AEW that year, with CEO and founder Tony Khan offering his blessing that Allin wouldn’t have to change anything about his style in and out of the ring.
Like the Seattle music scene that inspired Allin, AEW was the place where the punk rocker wouldn’t have to alter his style for the masses.
“I’ve seen punk bands play at these little dirty clubs and it was the best. And then I saw those same bands at a bigger venue and it lost its essence,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me how many people are in the crowd or who I’m playing with, I’m going to be me.”
IN 2020, A 61-year-old Steve Borden (stage name Sting) made his debut in AEW, five years after the iconic wrestler suffered what was presumed to be a career-ending neck injury wrestling in WWE. The unceremonious way he disappeared from pro wrestling didn’t sit right with Khan, and he brought Sting in to give the living legend a proper retirement sendoff. Unbeknownst to Allin, the plan was to pair Sting with the daredevil as an experiment in which kindred spirits from the past and present would unite for the legendary wrestler’s last ride.
Initially, the plan was for Allin and Sting to be involved in cinematic matches, pretaped to allow for cuts, retakes and visual effects to mask any of Sting’s shortcomings due to age and injury. Sting wasn’t sure how many matches he would have but agreed to give it a shot. Allin flew to Sting’s house in Texas to train, and once there, he realized that the Hall of Famer still had more to give as a pro wrestler.
With Allin’s urging, Sting agreed to wrestle his matches live, in front of audiences. And for the next three years, the duo went undefeated in matches, with Sting retiring as an AEW tag team champion with Allin. From going through tables to diving off stages and balconies, Sting was wrestling carefree and having the time of his life.
“At first, I was trying to talk some sense into him by saying he didn’t have to do these risky moves every match. But, man, he rubbed off on me, and I ended up taking way more risks than I anticipated myself taking,” Sting told ESPN. “By the end, you didn’t know whether the young guy was going to jump off the balcony or the old guy was going to jump off the balcony. And sometimes we both did together.”
Allin was inspiring a living legend to push himself to the limit and rewrite the ending of his career.
“Sting didn’t just go out playing the greatest hits,” Allin said. “He rewrote the whole f—ing book.”
Even with Sting now retired, the two share a brotherly bond despite a 34-year age gap. And of all the stunts they pulled together, there’s one thing that awaits Sting when he reconnects with Allin again.
“We haven’t had a chance to go play miniature golf together. I still owe him that,” Sting said. “We’ll be friends until one of us leaves the earth.
“He taught me how to live life to the fullest.”
KHAN AND ALLIN have an agreement: The wrestler can do whatever he wants (for the most part) that makes him feel alive, even if it’s taking a Jeep and jumping 96 feet over his house or doing a 500-foot bungee jump into a canyon.
“I do believe in letting the wrestlers live their lives because wrestling is the only sport that goes 52 weeks a year with no offseason,” Khan said. “If a wrestler comes to me and they want to do something outside of the ring, usually it’s trying to slow down and spend time with their family … not necessarily something that brings the element of more physical danger into their lives. But I trust Darby because his risks are calculated and he respects danger.
“Except that time with Sting when he went through the glass. That’s the only time I questioned if he respected the risk he was taking.”
According to Khan, he has had to tell Allin “no” nine or 10 times, including when Allin suggested that rival Sammy Guevara should hit him with a car. It was during the COVID-19 pandemic, when there were only 12 wrestlers available on the roster.
“I couldn’t afford to have him get hurt at that time,” Khan said.
In 2024, Allin had an appetite for something bigger and more dangerous than anything he had done previously: climb Mount Everest.
With the blessing of Khan, Allin went through arduous training in preparation — which included climbing smaller mountains to build his endurance, learning to use an ice axe, sitting in frozen waterfalls to ready his body to fight off hypothermia and properly conserve oxygen. Then it was off to the Himalayas to scale the world’s highest mountain at 29,032 feet.
“Everything I had done in my life is fast and with crazy adrenaline,” Allin said. “Climbing Mount Everest is risking your life in the slowest way possible. The climb is slow, plodding and forces you to have patience.
“You also have to be at peace with dying.”
This wasn’t your average stunt. The perilous trek has claimed more than 300 climbers over the years, including five climbers during the 2025 peak season. An estimated 200 frozen dead bodies remain on the mountain. Though Khan said that he didn’t think twice about allowing Allin to make the climb, the wrestler’s family and then-girlfriend, Sarah, struggled with the idea.
After over a year of training, Allin began his ascent with three strangers he was grouped with when he arrived at Mount Everest. For all of the dangerous things he had done in his life, this was the one time when he truly questioned if he’d come out on the other side alive.
“I was at total peace knowing I could die on that mountain,” Allin said. “But seeing my mother cry before I made the climb was when it hit me that this might be the last time I see anybody. But they all knew that there’s no turning it off. I’m going to climb that mountain.”
Allin remembers climbing past the frozen dead bodies he had only heard about as he made his way toward the summit.
“It was the purest form of survival up there,” he said. “There’s nothing more real than fighting for your life with nowhere to go and nobody to save you.”
On May 18, 2025, at 8:40 a.m. local time, Allin successfully summited Mount Everest. To celebrate the feat fewer than 7,600 people had completed since the first successful ascent in 1953, Allin did two things: planted an AEW flag and made a video proposing to Sarah.
THERE’S A LONG, uncomfortable pause over breakfast as Darby and Sarah exchange stares while discussing their future together. Allin leans forward to emphasize the point he’s about to make. Sarah resigns herself to what is about to come out of her fiancé’s mouth.
“Will having kids of my own change me and make me tone it down? No, I don’t believe so,” Allin says. “And I’ll tell you why. Because the moment I have a kid, I want to keep showing them that there’s no age limit that says you must calm down. You have to be that much more inspiring to them, because, who am I if I’m playing it safe with my 5-year-old? That’s not Darby Allin. But if I’m strapping the 5-year-old to a Can-Am and going on some jumps? That’s who I am. I want my kids to have the confidence I never had growing up.”
To date, Allin has affirmed that the person he was coming into this world will be the same going out. Everyone else, including his unborn children, will be along for the ride. Thus far, it has worked as Allin was able to help his parents retire, with his father now serving as Allin’s personal assistant who joins him on some of his stunts (“Why should his glory days be in his 20s?”). And though Allin has been successful, Sarah describes her fiancé as the most unselfish person she has ever met, with recognition being the one thing he doesn’t chase after.
“He’s so serious about taking care of everyone else that the only thing he concerns himself with is taking care of his body and his mind so he can continue to provide,” she says. “He doesn’t need to be recognized; he just wants to live.”
Even if he doesn’t chase recognition, there’s a level of fame that comes with wrestling on television. But it didn’t prevent Allin from putting up flyers the night before April’s “AEW Spring BreakThru” in Everett, Washington. At that event, he challenged AEW World Champion MJF at the Angel of the Winds Arena, 10 miles from the Buddy Wayne Academy.
“I was thinking to myself, the challenger for the world championship is hanging flyers all over the city,” Allin said in April. “People say they love AEW, but I don’t think anybody loves it as much as I love it. There are those who have a limit on what they’d do for AEW, but I would do literally anything for this place.”
Little did he know in the moment that it was time for AEW to recognize and reward him for all that he had given to the company.
“Darby has been here from the very first episode of ‘Dynamite’ and has become someone the fans truly believe in,” Khan said. “He has always given everything he had to this business, and it was a great time to make him the AEW World Champion and the face of the company.”
In the main event at “AEW Spring BreakThru,” Allin defeated MJF in under three minutes to become the AEW World Champion. Sting flew out to celebrate Allin in front of the fans who had watched him go from living in his car to becoming the world champion of one of the biggest wrestling promotions in the world. All by being himself.
You would think that the new AEW champion might take it easy after winning the promotion’s biggest honor.
Not Darby Allin.
“A few days after becoming champion, I flew to [extreme sports athlete] Travis Pastrana’s house and then did a 120-foot jump while holding on to bicycle handlebars I screwed on top of a Can-Am,” Allin said. “If I lost grip of those handlebars, it definitely would’ve been game over. But I had to get right back to it and live my life like Sammy Davis Jr.’s song ‘I’ve Gotta Be Me.'”
The answer to “How is Darby Allin not dead yet?” is different today, before AEW’s Double or Nothing PPV on Sunday, than it was in March.
“There’s a reason I didn’t die a lot of times and it’s because I got so much left to offer,” Allin said. “No matter what happens, I’m at peace with whatever happens to me. If it’s your time to go, then it’s your time to go.
“But, clearly, it’s not my time.”
