Darby Allin has used AEW pay to help parents retire
With his AEW pay, Darby Allin has helped his parents retire and is pushing them to live their best possible lives.
Allin, appearing on a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, explained that material things mean “nothing” to him at this point. The most important thing to him is helping his family get the most out of their lives. He brought his father to the Super Bowl and a motivational retreat recently, and his mother visited the base camp of Mount Everest when Allin climbed the mountain in 2025. Allin doesn’t want his parents to look back at their glory years — he wants them to be actively living out their best days now.
“Just seeing my family and loved ones get the most out of their lives,” Allin responded when asked what drives him day-to-day. “I pushed my dad and I pushed my — with what I’ve been able to make from AEW, I could have my parents retire. And I got them a house down the street from me now. So it’s just a matter of pushing them, because I didn’t want their glory days to be in their 20s. I want [it] to be right now, like right now your glory days. And I brought my dad to the Wim Hof [Dutch motivational speaker] retreat and I brought my mom to base camp.
“So I’m constantly pushing them to their limits. And to see people, kind of like how I overcame a lot with just the craziness I did and broke down those mental barriers, when I see that in other people and I see that light switch go off, like, ‘Oh, I can do anything. I am confident.’ There’s nothing better than that.”
Taking a selfless approach is something Allin also tries to do in his wrestling career. He wants to give his opponents their best matches and raise the profile of AEW.
“My whole thing is trying to make someone look as good as possible,” Allin said. “I don’t think about, you know, ‘How is this going to benefit Darby?’ Sometimes I feel like I’m almost too, I don’t know what the word is, too kind, too giving to the point where maybe it can be a little detriment to myself. Maybe I gotta look out for myself more.
“But that’s my thing. My goal is to just give people their best matches. People look back, like, ‘Damn, Darby made so and so look like a million dollars. Oh, and he made so and so look like a million dollars.’ Because that’s the beauty of this is it takes two to tango and it’s super fun when you can just raise up everybody’s stock and then the company is so much better in that aspect.”
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.