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All Elite Wrestling star Darby Allin has been praised as one of the company's 'pillars,' given his importance to its launch and continued success since 2019.
It's a role he's lived up to both inside and outside of the ring, having consistently been one of the company's top stars while also, literally, carrying its flag to the summit of Mount Everest last year. Allin credited AEW for allowing him to be himself completely in an industry where many have historically developed personas to find success.
"With AEW, it gave me everything and I had to change nothing," Allin said in an exclusive interview with iHeartMedia this week ahead of AEW's Dynasty pay-per-view event airing live from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on Sunday (April 12). "So to be the face of that is everything to me. To inspire future generations that maybe they can just watch like, 'oh, this guy literally became the face of this company while never having to change a thing so maybe I don't have to change a thing.' Because in a world where everybody's telling you you're not good enough, I feel like you need to be reminded that you are always enough and to do that while staying true to myself that's why I need to become world champion of this place."
Allin shares his 'pillar' moniker with Maxwell Jacob Friedman, who currently holds the AEW Men's World Championship, the one title that's alluded him. The 33-year-old will face Andrade El Idolo at AEW Dynasty on Sunday and will be guaranteed a future AEW Men's World Championship if he wins the match, with Friedman set to defend the title against Kenny Omega in the event's main event match.
Allin said "it's hard to say" whether defeating Friedman would make his first world championship victory even sweeter given the option to have a potential dream match with Omega, one of the industry's most celebrated wrestlers from the past decade and a co-founder of AEW.
"Yes, because me and Max have gone at it for years, way before AEW on the independents we were at each other's throats. So to take that from him, somebody that is literally my polar opposite, would mean everything. But on the flip side, if Kenny Omega's champion, that's a first time ever match. Something that a lot of people never thought they'd see. I would never think I would've ever saw that. I was never in that realm at the time with Kenny and New Japan [Pro Wrestling] and everything like that.
"To be world champion is everything because I feel this company has given me everything outside the ring and inside the ring. To be the face of this company I truly feel like you need to be that world champion so this week is pretty much do or die."
Allin completed a two-month expedition of Mount Everest on May 18, 2025, making his return to AEW at the company's All In pay-per-view event last July. The Seattle native said he was "able to shove so much things into that trip," which included proposing to his girlfriend in a video recorded from the summit -- clarifying that "she wasn't on the summit...because she did not want to die on the mountain," as well as setting the world record for the highest elevation skateboard kickflip at 20,958 feet, planting the AEW flag and "talking my s**t to [then-AEW Men's World Champion Jon] Moxley" in a video that played during his All In return.
"It was incredible," Allin said. "I cried at the top because I realized that wrestling is a thing that has no offseason. It's all year long. And the fact that I was able to do this in the middle of my career, I just can't put into words because I understood that I was truly living on that mountain. I wasn't just a cog on the wheel that was going to get chewed up and spit out by the machine, I was truly alive on that mountain."
AEW Dynasty will stream live on HBO Max or PPV.com in the United States or Prime Video and MYAEW.com in international markets on Sunday, April 12, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. ET. AEW's flagship weekly television show, Dynamite, will broadcast live on TBS and HBO Max from Rogers Place in Edmonton, Canada, Wednesday (April 8) at 8:00 p.m. ET.