5 things you didn't know about AEW star Darby Allin
AEW's Darby Allin is one of the most exciting young wrestlers of this generation. Since joining the company at its inception in 2019, Darby has emerged from relative obscurity to become a former TNT Champion and share the ring with some of the best in the business, including Cody Rhodes, Chris Jericho, Sting, and CM Punk.
https://t.co/7BqE9Pe7r6
From the half-face paint, daredevil attitude to the mysterious black-and-white persona, it is a cool X-factor that has helped Darby Allin create a bond with the AEW audience few wrestlers possess. The homegrown AEW wrestler is also lauded for being one of the company's four pillars.
While his popularity is undeniable, Darby is still quite the enigma. Like his mentor Sting, the skateboarding wrestler is a brooding character and pretty much a private person out of the ring. Here are five things about Darby Allin that you might not know.
#5 From dropping out of film school, living homeless to AEW star
And when you go away
I still see you. https://t.co/hcWXWsuAaI
Before he hit superstardom in All Elite Wrestling as a wrestler, Darby Allin (real name Samuel Ratsch) harbored ambitions of making documentaries for a living. He enrolled in film school in Arizona at 18 years old but later dropped out to pursue skateboarding and wrestling full-time.
His filmmaking background came in handy when it came to his presentation in AEW. Darby directs most of his backstage stories and was heavily involved in putting together the cinematic street fight at this year's Revolution PPV where he teamed up with Sting against Team Taz.
Before I dropped outta film school.
I was creating masterpieces like this. https://t.co/zKN3sYcF33
Darby has also opened up in the past about the struggles he endured before making it big in AEW. In a previous interview with Chris Jericho on the Talk Is Jericho podcast, he revealed that he lived homeless in his car for many years while wrestling in various independent promotions across the United States early on in his career:
"Atlanta [Georgia]. Yeah, I started wrestling in Seattle [Washington]. Then, I moved to Florida once I signed to EVOLVE, and from there, I moved to Atlanta because I didn't feel like I was getting out of Florida what I wanted training-wise, so I just left and went to all these different schools around the country, and just living in my car."
Safe to say, Darby has been through a lot in his early life. It makes his success in AEW all the more deserved and for the fans who know of his tough background, it makes him even more of a babyface that you want to root for.