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flytohurt · 3 months

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Thrasher mag, March 2024 issue // buy it here! by Matt Pendry

article under the cut!

Skateboarding seems to be everywhere these days, including in the wrestling ring. But if somebody is going to hop over the ropes with a board, we're glad it's Darby Allin because he's not using skating as a gimmick - the dude rips! Despite putting his body through the ringer three-to-four nights a week wrestling, he's still out there getting broke off on his board - and loving every second of it. We caught up recently to talk about living in his vehicle, his guest model on Deathwish and jumping a car over his damn house. Check it.

What's going on, Darby? I'm on the way to the FA warehouse to hang out before we do this meet and greet at their store later today, and on top of that I'm getting ready to go to Mount Everest on Saturday. I got so much shit planned. I have to get hit by a car tomorrow and I have a joint sprain at the moment, so I'm trying to stay at 100 percent.

What do you mean you have to get hit by a car tomorrow? I have to get hit by this car for an AEW promo show tomorrow, then do an actual show in Inglewood and them jump on a red-eye flight to China to train for Mount Everest, so I got to make sure my body stays in one piece.

It sounds like you have a lot going on right now! Where are you originally from? I was born in Arizona, but I was only there for two months so from my brain's standpoint all I remember is Seattle.

Did you start skaing there? Yeah, I started skating in eighth grade.

Is that also around the time you started filming yourself with a tripod? Yeah, it would just rain all the time in Seattle, so when you got a sunny day you couldn't take it for granted - you had to go balls to the wall. That's pretty much when the inception of all my craziness started. You know, sitting at home all day thinking about skating while it was raining. By the time it was sunny it was time to rock and that's when I would get sent to the hospital.

I heard you broke your leg one time and had to push yourself home. That's when I was going to film school in Arizona. It was my first month there and I was trying to drop in on the ASU art museum structure. It's this huge drop in I'd seen in videos. I didn't have a filmer because I'm impatient and don't like to wait for people, so I set up a camera on a tripod and went for it. I flew into the concrete wall in the landing and broke my foot. At that time I had no money and the buses had stopped running, so I had to push myself on my board all the way home. It was a good ten miles; so gnarly. Then I was just sitting there sweating in a hot-ass apartment all summer with no AC and a broken foot.

Sounds like a long summer. I head you were homeless when you moved to Georgia to join the amateur wrestling circuit and make a name for yourself. How long did that last? I was living in my car in Georgia for about five months, pretty much because I didn't want to end up complacent or lazy. A lot of people sit on the couch all day every day, but when you're living in your car, in the middle of the Georgia summer, you get woken up pretty early. It was just a way to push myself out of my comfort zone because I think comfort zones are the death of most people. So, that's the big reason I wanted to be homeless in my car and it ended up working out.

It sounds like with that environment and mindset you were able to push yourself to where you are today. Yeah, absolutely. Everything I do in life is to get out my comfort zone. All the crazy stuff I do, whether I'm getting hit by a car, or jumping over my house, or trying to climb Mount Everest, or sleeping in my car, it helps me get out of my comfort zone and that's usually what chills me out.

Was cooking chicken in the bathroom of a gym on a George Foreman grill out of your comfort zone? Well, I used to park outside of an Anytime Fitness and go cook chicken in the bathroom. Everybody in the gym could smell that shit and would be like, What's going on?

You got to do what you got to do. I didn't have a kitchen or money to eat out so it saved me so much money.

Were you skating much during this time, or had your focus shifted to wrestling? I pretty much stopped skating for a solid year and a half. It was weird - I felt like in order to make it in wrestling I needed to dedicate my life to it and at a certain point I really felt something was missing and I couldn't pinpoint what it was. I was feeling this depression like something about my life was just not there anymore, and then the moment I picked up a skateboard again I was like, Oh shit, this is it, for sure. I never put it back down after that. I've been skating all the time now, even though I'm signed to this company and have to wrestle every week. It's like, You can't pay me enough to stop skating now. When I stopped skating for that year and a half I felt it. Mentally, I really felt it; it just sucked.

Does All Elite Wrestling ask you to take it easy on the skating? No, it sounds crazy but they trust me. I still skate so much. I'm not just doing rock to fakies either - I'm usually trying some crazy shit, so it's really hard to balance out the two worlds, especially when you have to perform every week and you have a passion for skateboarding. I don't think anybody truly understands how much I thread the needle on a weekly basis.

I heard when you first got signed to AEW, they couldn't guarantee you anything because they didn't know what was going to happen with the new company. The parallels are almost identical to many pro skater's careers in this aspect - style, personality, presentation and so much more go into both curating and carrying out a successful skateboarding or wrestling career. Being a few years into a professional wrestling career, do you think it's similar to being a professional skater? I think the overall difference is skateboarding is just more unpredictable. With wrestling, once you make it you're kind of set. I feel like being a pro skater would be a lot harder and there's no real guarantee for the future. Once you can't skate anymore you're kind of spit out of the system, but with wrestling there's more options with what you can do outside of it once your body gives out.

I'm saying the career path is what is so similar - where you go and live in your car with no money and push yourself into this life. Well, would you rather do that or would you rather play it safe? I worked at a 99 Cents store and the mental pain of working at a place like that versus risking your body every day is a no-brainer. I would rather risk my body any day.

Let's talk about the Gates of Hell slam you took a few days before doing a pay-per-view match in Arizona. I was filming this AEW intro video with Max Yoder at the Gates of Hell. Jaws was there, too. There's a big crack at the bottom that wasn't Bondo'd. I tried to no comply backside 360, hit the crack and flew into the wall at the bottom. I fell into this red anthill. I just laid there while they were eating me up. The first thing I thought was, Oh shit, I have to wrestle next week. So I went to Jaws' house and was like, Alright, if I piss blood I'll go to the hospital. If not, I'm good. I sat in the bathtub for like two hours and there was no blood, so all good. A few days later I show up limping for this big match and everybody was like, What happened? I told them I was training and hit my knee, because I have a wrestling ring at my house. I have such a drive to show skateboarding to the pro-wrestling world because they've never really seen it before, so that's why I wanted to skate the Gates of Hell, but I got annihilated.

In true akater fashion you just want to put it on the line! That's what it's all about. It seems like you want to represent skating in the right way and not as some lame gimmick to your persona. It's actually who you are and where you came from. Continuing to skate is certainly a risk because I feel like I have a high standard for how I want to skate. I don't want to just play it safe.

How did the guest board with Deathwish come about? It was my friend Steve Hernandez's idea, who works at Deathwish. He was trying to sell it to Reynolds and Ellington, but they were kind of on the fence. Once they saw some of my skating they were like, Yeah, he's actually a skater. Let's get it! Then we created the Darby Allin AEW Deathwish board. I was super grateful for that whole experience.

When you started making a little bread from AEW, was the backyard skatepark the first dream that was brought to life? Yeah! I got a roll in out of my kitchen window. We have like 14 acres of fucking chaos - there's dirt jumps, a skatepark, we're blowing up cars every weekend. It's just a representation of what I would have wanted when I was ten years old: a fantasy land mixed with Nitro Circus and skating.

Which brings me to the house jump - how did you get the idea for that? We were filming a pilot for my TV show Darby's Days Off and they asked me, What's something you want to do? I was looking at my yard and I said, Can't we just build a big-ass jump over the house? The next week there was a truck unloading dirt and building this massive jump and we even got mobile-home trailers. Travis Pastrana told me trailers are like a crash pad for cars. Earlier that week he also told me there was a good chance I'd break my back if I didn't land it right. Tony Khan, my boss at AEW, asked me if I could a stunt duble and I was like, No way. The moment I landed it, Tony was on FaceTime and I jumped out of the car and was like, I can make it Wednesday! He's always getting stressed out with my shenanigans.

I'm sure he was hyped once he saw how much publicity the video received. That's my whole goal with professional wrestling. I feel like a lot of wrestlers play it safe outside of the ring. To find a way to attract a new audience or fans you have to think outside the box.

You're certainly thinking way outside the box. You clipped the house but still came out alright. What were the stats? How far did you fly? It was a 96-foot jump over the house. It was insane and by far the gnarliest thing I've ever done.

Have any fans or fellow wrestlers ever given you shit about bringing a skateboard into the ring? No, not really. I feel like the best thing to do in wrestling is bring something from outside of wrestling into the ring. Nobody's ever been like, Yo, what the hell? Why do you have a skateboard?

Because they know you actually skate! That's the thing - if I didn't really skate and everyone saw me out there with it, they'd be like, All this is just same fake pro-wrestling shit. There's a lot of that going on already and I don't want to add to it.

It seems like after everything that you have been through you've made the best of the situation - you've got action figures in Target; your matches are televised across the world; I've literally seen you on billboards. You're a celebrity at this point! So, one last thing - I know you're a certified psycho, but are you serious about this Mount Everest thing? You're about to fly to China for a month. Are you actually training to climb it? Absolutely. When I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I just want to work for it. I want something to push towards again that's going to be extremely difficult. It's more of a spiritual quest. I have a lot of things I want to do in life, but Mount Everest kept calling me for whatever reason. I only have six months to train for it and my guides there tell me that's unheard of, but I feel like with everything I've put myself through in life I can 100 percent do it.

Are you going to take your board? Are you going to be the first person to get a clip on top of Everest? I don't even know if that's possible to bring up there. I'll have to ask them, but that would be epic.

Well, I can't wait to see what's next. Do you think we're going to get a full Darby part anytime in the near future? Yeah, it's a goal of mine. Once I get back from Everest I want to start filming.

I know it would be one for the books. Thanks for talking with us, Darby. You're truly one of a kind, my friend. Good luck on the mountain! We'll see how it all plays out. If this interview comes out before Everest, cool. If not and I die on the mountain, then yeah, I don't know...

You're a skater. You'll be all right. Yeah, I guess we'll put that to the test.

#darby allin #darbyallin #thrasher #thrasher magazine #yes i did both purchase a copy and transcribe it for all of you

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