Darby Allin may be getting Wrestler of the Year praise after his AEW World Championship run, but he’s not chasing trophies or Meltzer ratings. In fact, he believes building matches around that kind of recognition would take away exactly what makes his wrestling his own.
Speaking to Adrian Hernandez, Allin was asked whether his acclaimed title defenses against names like Tommaso Ciampa and Konosuke Takeshita had made him feel differently about how he’s viewed as a wrestler. Not really.
“You know, wrestling moves so fast people forget what happened yesterday. So I don’t really—it’s like what I feel in the soul and what Tony Khan feels and what my family feels and my friends in the company. You know, I value their opinion.”
For Allin, even becoming AEW World Champion didn’t change the bigger picture. Wrestling isn’t going to last forever, and he doesn’t want success inside it changing the person he’ll eventually have to live with outside of it.
“But I just know that that’s—that’s why to me this is just a 15-minute ride and it was very important for me to keep my head on straight and stay humble through all that because it’s going to end and when it does I want to know who I’m looking at in the mirror. That’s all I want.”
Allin credited Sting with helping shape that outlook. Then came the awards.
“That’s my whole goal with wrestling and that’s why I’m so grateful for my time with Sting. But, um, no, I—I don’t care about reward, like awards and all that stuff.”
When Dave Meltzer ratings were specifically mentioned, Darby Allin explained why they don’t factor into his thinking. And he isn’t about to start laying out matches with an award or star rating in the back of his mind.
“Yeah. It—it doesn’t matter cuz if you’re—if you’re performing for said reward, then it’s not coming from a pure place. It’s like if a band starts and they’re like, ‘Oh, we want to win a Grammy.’ And if that’s—you’re not doing it for a pure reason. So, like, I kind of just do what’s pure to me because if I start designing my match to try to get an extra, you know, award or something like that, it—it’s not—it’s no longer pure to me. So, yeah.”
MJF recently made his own feelings about Meltzer ratings crystal clear, saying he doesn’t care about getting “five, six, seven stars” and would rather win. Allin is coming at it from a different place, but he lands somewhere similar.
Darby Allin will take the acclaimed matches. He’ll take the championship. But the former AEW World Champion isn’t changing the way he wrestles just to make somebody give him another star.
Do you agree with Darby Allin that chasing ratings and awards can hurt what makes a wrestler unique, or do those accolades still matter? Let us know in the comments.
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