Darby Allin returned to All Elite Wrestling at All In Texas to stop the Death Riders from costing Hangman Adam Page his shot at the AEW Men’s World Championship.
Allin’s return came after he spent time climbing Mount Everest, a decision he made after recovering from the brutal attack the Death Riders gave Darby on the final episode of AEW Rampage.
Darby made the choice to climb Mt. Everest instead of trying to return and enter the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament, choosing to prove to himself he could ascend heights people doubted he could accomplish. Wrestling fans speculated on the danger, said Tony Khan should stop him from doing it, said he could risk his life just to chase another thrill.
Darby Allin however wasn’t just chasing a thrill. He was accomplishing a personal dream of proving he could still do things outside of the professional wrestling business that nobody believed he could. He was challenged to climb a proverbial mountain in AEW. He was climbing a literal mountain in Nepal.
“I see a mountain at my gates
I see it more and more each day
I see a fire out by the lake
I’ll drive my car without the brakes”
– Mountain at my Gates by Foals
That experience shaped Darby Allin. On WTF With Marc Maron, Allin expressed how climbing the mountain meant nobody was in control of your destiny. “It doesn’t work like that in pro wrestling. It is so much politicking and random shit that goes into it. I wanted to prove to myself that I’m fucking capable of it. You can’t politic your way up that mountain.”
The mountain we talked about Darby having to climb was in facing Jon Moxley and winning the AEW Men’s World Championship. That mountain it doesn’t seem like Darby cares about anymore. Darby tried and failed on that one.
It’s a very difficult lesson for a lot of people to understand in the world of professional wrestling. For a lot of people, failing to go to the top of the mountain doesn’t get treated as a simple failure. It gets treated as a burial. A proclamation that the company is unwilling to go all the way with someone. Some wrestlers never overcome that failure. For Darby? It doesn’t matter anymore.
Darby tried to fight a mountain in the Death Riders. He watched as everyone around him were more concerned with fighting each other and trying to fight in trivial tournaments. He entered the Continental Classic himself, but his primary goal was still the Death Riders. He tried to reach out to Will Ospreay but Ospreay wanted to win the C2 before actually helping him. Ospreay focused on the C2 and Darby got thrown down those stairs.
That’s why Darby Allin doesn’t care right now. He tried and failed. But as he ascended Mt. Everest he watched as All Elite Wrestling finally got their shit together so to speak and rallied not around Darby, not around Will Ospreay, but around Hangman Adam Page.
Darby has no love for Page, and even defeated him back in July of last year when Page was still an unfocused ball of rage. The pecking order in the company was pretty clear back then. It’s changed since Allin took his sabbatical. But Darby knew after climbing Mt. Everest and coming back down that in returning to AEW he was returning to an All Elite Wrestling finally united in his goal to end the Death Riders.
A lot of folks have left that goal since Page has become AEW Men’s World Champion, but not Darby Allin. Darby is still laser focused on taking out Mox and the Death Riders. Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay may have come out to help Page at All In Texas, but that help is no longer being provided. The only person who has had Page’s back as of late has been Darby Allin.
Darby has yet to wrestle since his return but that’s because his goal isn’t right now to wrestle. Trying to play the game didn’t work. “You can’t politic your way up the mountain.” So Darby is instead bringing the fight to the Death Riders, and he took it a step beyond what anyone expected on Collision over the weekend.
The night started with Jon Moxley and the Death Riders causing their usual chaos and Moxley trying to call out Darby Allin. Darby confronted him high above the arena in the upper balcony, showing he still prefers the high elevation, especially when fighting the Death Riders at this point. But when Moxley tried to do his usual speech, Darby just walked away.
Allin knows the game now. He knows how Jon Moxley keeps power and control. There’s no point trying to counter it anymore. Adam Page learned that too. Darby once tried to call out Moxley and accuse him of being back on the booze when this all started. It got some oohs and ahhs from the audience but it didn’t phase Moxley. Moxley not being heard, not being given the time? That’s what enrages Jon Moxley.
Once the Death Riders tried to find Darby in the arena, he outsmarted them and used an ether soaked rag on Moxley to incapacitate him, and pulled him outside in Chicago to a fire escape. Darby had a choice: do to Moxley what the Death Riders did to Darby in throwing him down stairs, or worse: throw him off the fire escape right off the arena.
Darby isn’t just being an attempted murderer here. He’s showing that he’s willing to go right to the same lengths that the Death Riders did and then some. Death Riders loved using ether and pouring windex on their opponents and suffocating people under a plastic bag. They always took it too far and then never got punished for it out of fear and power. That power is gone, and Darby Allin, after climbing Mt. Everest, fears nothing.
It’s unclear yet if Darby Allin plans to challenge the Death Riders for Blood and Guts and gets a few partners for it or if Darby plans to continue to do this solo. He’s so far been successful at avoiding the numbers game of the Death Riders and continue to attack them from above and in the shadows. Even Hangman never got Moxley’s number the way Darby has it right now. He’s systematically destroying Jon Moxley and getting him more vulnerable than he’s ever been.
I’m sure there’s more to the story, and Moxley is too smart to let Darby just keep getting the better of him, but it’s clear that Darby Allin is not going to stop until he feels the Death Riders are no more. Jon Moxley believed he was king of the lands and was going to destroy AEW because he hated what it became. Well AEW has now changed, but it never changed in his image.
Darby Allin may have never climbed the mountain of AEW. He failed in that. But that mountain is behind him now. Failure is not what defines him. Darby doesn’t need to be the AEW Men’s World Champion at this time. He just needs to set out what he said he planned to do high up in Nepal: destroy the Death Riders.
“I’m on top of the fucking world. Mount Everest. Now Jon Moxley I’m coming down to take everything from you.”
“Oh, when I come to climb
Show me the mountain so far behind
Yeah, it’s farther away
Its shadow gets smaller day after day”
– Mountain at my Gates by Foals
