YMMV / Darby Allin

• Awesome Moments:
  • Finally beating Cody at Full Gear 2020 to become TNT Champion, his first title in the promotion, the moment that AEW pulled the trigger on the young star.
  • When Sting made his startling debut in AEW on the "Winter Is Coming" special episode of Dynamite, rescuing Darby, Cody, Dustin Rhodes and Arn Anderson from a beatdown after their victory over Team Tazz, The Icon went around the ring having a staredown with each man, starting with the oldest (Arn) and working his way through Dustin and Cody to the current-generation star, Darby. Darby, who'd been compared to Sting several times, was the only one to stand up to Sting and stare boldly back into his eyes, refusing to be intimidated, even though the WCW legend towered over him. Sting spent several seconds examing Darby's face from every angle before backing away.
  • His first official title defence against "the Machine" Brian Cage in the main event of New Year's Smash night 2. Cage brutalised Darby over and over again, including a terrifying spot on par with the most shocking Darby had ever done where Cage Gorilla Press Slammed him from inside the ring through the timekeeper's table, busting him open. Darby never flinched, stopped fighting, or stopped taunting Cage to Bring It, eventually turning the tables with a Coffin Drop onto Cage who was laid out on the steel ring steps, and with the timely assistance of Sting to prevent Ricky Starks from interfering, Darby was able to defeat Cage with a Crucifix Slam pin. An absolutely savage match that made Cage look like a terrifying monster of a man, but made Darby look like the ultimate Determinator for being able to survive and eventually overcome him.
  • Becoming CM Punk's first opponent at All Out 2021 after Punk's 7-year hiatus. In fact, Punk personally selected Darby, who, as usual, went balls to the wall against the Chicago legend, and while he was ultimately defeated, Darby still needed two hits of the Go To Sleep to be finally put away.
• Awesome Music: "I Fell", his AEW theme, is an absolute banger.
• Broken Base: Darby and his extremely bump-heavy wrestling style are quite the polarizing topics: Detractors argue that what he's doing is genuinely dangerous and he should stop it before he severely ruins himself in the long term (à la Mick Foley or Jeff and Matt Hardy), with some calling him a glorified Spot Monkey with a death wish who shouldn't be allowed to wrestle, period. Fans and defenders meanwhile argue that his style is more "controlled chaos" than it looks, that he's professional enough to understand his own risks, and that as scary as it is, his surprising lack of injury reports and required time off speaks for itself. A related argument is whether or not it's even necessary: many argue that it's a strength of Darby's performance style (his sheer determination and ferocity making it so that he looks strong, even in defeat), while others argue that it's gratuitous, prone to diminishing returns, and just plain stupid.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While he had a respectable indie career before signing with them, Darby is quite possibly AEW's biggest "home-grown" success story, one of the most popular up-and-coming stars in the promotion and the first of them to be able to win a men's title.^note Before he won the TNT Championship, the World Championship had only been held by Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley and the TNT Championship had only been traded once between Cody Rhodes and Brodie Lee. The women's champions have been a bit more varied, with Riho, Nyla Rose and Hikaru Shida all being previously unknown to an American audience. He went into his debut match against top AEW face Cody at Fyter Fest 2019 as a relative unknown, but by the end of the match he was a made man, and has been a top star in the promotion (albeit one who had to work his way to the top the hard way) ever since.
• Memetic Badass: As terrifying and reckless as his proclivity to take crazy bumps is, Darby has nevertheless built up a well-deserved reputation of being utterly fearless in risking his well-being against frightening odds for the sake of wrestling, helped by having weirdly good luck in recovering from injuries (including one non-wrestling accident where he was hit by a bus, and only broke his nose from it). For those who aren't just constantly scared for his health, it's often joked that Darby is constantly playing games with the Grim Reaper, and Darby is winning.
• Shocking Moments: Darby fearlessly takes insane bumps in his matches in order to sell his determination and make his opponents look like brutal monsters, some of them so frightening that even the bloodthirstiest fans sometimes think he needs to tone it down a bit:
  • During his debut match against Cody he took two savage bumps. The first was when Cody hurled him against the turnbuckle, causing him to go between the ropes, smash back-first into the ring post and ragdoll to the floor outside the ring. The second, known colloquially as "the bump heard around the world", came near the end of the match where he had Cody down on the apron and went up top for the Coffin Drop, only for Cody to roll out of the way back into the ring, causing Darby to take a flat, unprotected back bump straight onto the apron, bouncing off it and dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
  • During the 3-way Cracker Barrel Clash between Darby, Joey Janela and Jimmy Havoc at All Out 2019, Darby went for a Coffin Drop onto Havoc, who was lying on the steel steps outside the ring, with a cracker barrel held behind his back, only for Havoc to dodge at the last second, sending Darby crashing through the barrel as he hit the steps, completely wiping him out of the match.
  • In the Casino Battle Royal at All Out 2020, Darby was eliminated by Brian Cage in horrifying fashion when Cage forced Darby into a body bag (which Darby had, true to form, brought out with him), poured thumbtacks into the bag, then zipped it closed and powerbombed him over the top rope onto the ramp outside. This was definitely one of the most-prominent "too far" spots that has been criticised as just being too dangerous, as being in the bag inhibited Darby's ability to take the move or land properly by both restricting his motion and completely blinding him.
  • A rare one of these moments that isn't Darby killing himself for our sins came during his climactic 4th match against Cody at Full Gear 2020 when, at the end of a long series of pin attempts and reversals, Darby outwrestled Cody and pinned him for the 3 count, winning his first title in AEW by becoming TNT Champion and, as he now calls himself, "the face of TNT".
  • After beating Ethan Page in a Casket Match on night 1 of Fyter Fest 2021 by shutting Page into the coffin (already a brutal match which saw Darby kick out of an Ego's Edge from the second rope onto the steel ring steps), Darby wasn't quite through with his opponent, so he scaled the turnbuckle and performed a Coffin Drop onto the coffin! No tricks were involved for Page to slip out of the coffin first and there were no obvious safety precautions or extra padding- the audience could see clearly that Darby crashed straight through the coffin lid and smashed right onto Page, leaving both men lying in a mess of splintered wood.
  • Early on in Sting's retirement match at Revolution 2024, Darby and Sting's two sons arranged six steel chairs into a loose platform on the outside of the ring and laid a large sheet of frosted glass across it (if you think you know where this is going, you have no idea...). Later in the match, Darby positioned Nicholas Jackson in front of the setup, unfolded a huge ladder inside the ring, climbed up to near the top of it and launched himself off it in an insane senton attempt... only for Matthew Jackson to pull his brother out of the way at the last second, sending Darby plunging down roughly 20 feet before smashing spine-first through the glass and the chairs to splat onto the floor outside, leaving him completely dead to the world for roughly 10 minutes... after which, only 10 minutes later, he somehow did actually manage to get up and get back into the match, despite the fact that his back looked like a map of the London Underground drawn in red.^note This spot was so brutal and dangerous that Darby had to go through a lot of extra precautions and preparation before AEW would approve it, and they even had an entire alternative finish for the match prepared in advance just in case the spot ended up debilitating him to the point he couldn't recover to perform his planned part.