Darby Allin ‘very grateful’ Sting was there for AEW World title victory
Darby Allin says he’s grateful that Sting was there to witness him win the AEW World Championship.
Allin won the title from Maxwell Jacob Friedman on the April 15 edition of Dynamite in Everett, Washington. Sting was shown giving Darby some last-minute advice backstage before the world title match and later came out to celebrate the win with his former tag team partner.
During a recent interview with Yahoo Sports, Darby said it meant a lot to have Sting there so he could see that Darby was applying what he had learned from him about being humble.
Darby said:
“Having [Sting] there, I’ve said it to him before in private — I look up to him outside of the ring like no other,” says Allin. “The fact that he’s climbed to the top of the sport, and he’s been the most humble, cool guy in the world, that’s all I ever wanted. I didn’t want to let any of the ego or the fame consume me, because this is just a 15-minute ride. I want to look at myself in the mirror when this is all done — and now I’m looking back at — and I feel Sting is the quintessential guy for that.
He’s so grounded. So to have him there, it was amazing. It was amazing because he could see that I was taking notes from him, and I didn’t walk around like I was the king of the world afterwards. I’m very grateful for it all.”
Sting was also interviewed for the article and compared his relationship with Darby to the one he had with Ric Flair. Sting said that while he and Darby were not rivals in the same way he and Flair were, he saw something in Darby similar to what Flair saw in him.
“I had somebody like Ric Flair that had the ability to make or break me. And I think I probably had the ability to do the same thing with Darby, even though we weren’t opponents, we were on the same team,” Sting says.
“But I saw something in him, he saw something in me, and the rest just clicked.”
Darby will look to defend the AEW World Championship for the second time on tonight’s Dynamite from Fairfax, Virginia. He is scheduled to defend the title against Brody King after successfully defending it against Tommaso Ciampa last week.
The full interview with Darby Allin and Sting is available here through Yahoo Sports.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.