By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Darby Allin
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On being one of only 7,000 people to have climbed Mount Everest: “Yeah, I don’t know. It just puts things into perspective, kind of how small your problems are, what you think is so big really doesn’t mean a thing. It’s very humbling when you’re up there, because it’s hard to have an ego when you’re fighting for your life on a daily basis. Because you don’t care about how you look, you don’t care about how you smell. You just want to survive. So it’s pretty cool to be in that type of energy.”
On the real possibility he could have died and whether he said his goodbyes beforehand: “Yeah, absolutely. I climbed with my mom and my brother to base camp, and the base camp hike, to a lot of people it’s no joke, it takes like 10-12 days. The elevation is like 17,000 [feet]. But the reality hit me when my mom and my brother were leaving base camp, and now I had to stay behind to actually go for the summit, and I was going to be there for another month after they left, but when I saw them walking away, the reality hit, oh shit, this might be the last time you see them. Then I just thought about, this might be the last time you’ve seen anybody. I was like, Oh, crazy. So I went in my tent, and I cried, and I filmed a little vlog about it and stuff, being like, there’s no way I’m gonna die on this mountain. I’m gonna summit, then I’m going to come back down and see a lot of people. So it was a commitment I made to myself when I was up there.”
On why he wanted to do it: “What I said earlier, I wanted to tell myself I was capable of anything, because you find yourself on this hamster wheel in wrestling. There’s no off-season. It’s all year long. And sometimes you feel like you’re living your life for somebody else. I wanted to really find out who I was going to be on the other side of Everest, and I didn’t want to live my life for somebody else. I wanted to really prove to myself what I was capable of. Because it goes back to the politicking and everything like that, and the egos. I can’t stand it.”
Whether AEW has ever told him that it’s too much and they don’t want him to do something: “The Sting spot, easily, the Sting spot [off the ladder through the glass]. I remember the moment I hit it, my adrenaline was just going through the roof, and the referee comes up, ‘How are you feeling?’ I feel good. He’s like, oh shit. My insides got sliced into the glass, and then he’s like, ‘We got to bring you to the back.’ I was like, There’s no way you can bring me to the back. So if you see me come back into the match at the very end, I’m wrapped in duct tape. And I was like, just wrap it up, I only have one more spot. So let’s finish strong. I can’t go to the back. I remember Tony (Khan) saying that could have been really bad.”
Whether it hurt: “Surprisingly not. But a couple of weeks later, I’m still pulling glass out of myself. I don’t know. It wasn’t like, oh my God, that was miserable. I was like that was chill. If you look back at when I did the front flip off the ladder onto Jeff, I whisper in his ear when we’re lying down, I’m like, that was fun, just to let him know. Because a lot of these spots, when you do some crazy stuff, you don’t know how the person you’re wrestling is going to be after it. So it’s kind of good to give them the whole like, Dude, this is cool.”
Whether being AEW World Champion is a goal: “I don’t know. It’s a weird question. It’s something I talked to Sting about. I never really cared about championships. I care more about just good storylines. To me, that’s where I feel like my head is on that thing. Would it be cool to be the face of a company? Yes, absolutely, considering I do feel like I best represent what AEW can give. Because you take a guy like Darby Allin, where would Darby have fit in the grand scheme of pro wrestling if it wasn’t for AEW? But you just see, hey, here’s a guy, be you.”
Be the first to comment