Darby Allin & Why Nothing Matters When Nothing Hurts
My dad and I were at a WWF house show at Rupp Arena in 1997 when Doug Furnas and Philip LaFon came to the ring for a match. As they made their entrance, the two of them flipped off the fans. My dad was not pleased and said the two of them should be made to apologize. I said that the team they were going to be facing would beat them up instead and you could see the light going off in my dad’s head. Suddenly he was at least starting to get the idea of how heels were doing their job despite it all being staged. Now put your finger there and jump forward with me.
The other day I was explaining some things about wrestling to my dad, including what happens when the fans get behind someone. I put on a clip from WrestleMania XXX and while I was explaining the Daniel Bryan vs. the Authority/the YES Movement story, he kept saying things like “yeah, but they both work for the same company so this doesn’t really make sense”. In other words, the polar opposite of what he seemed to get a mere 17 years earlier.
What strikes me about these two different things is that a balance has to be found to make some people enjoy wrestling. There are some simple ideas that can get through to them while there are also times where things go too far and it becomes more silly than anything else. That’s where wrestling promotions have to be walked like a tightrope, because there is almost no way to make everyone happy. That can be made all the more difficult when things go way too far in one direction. That’s what we’re going to be looking at this week in some modern wrestling.
Darby Allin's Cage Fall At AEW Blood & Guts Got No Reaction
Last week on AEW Dynamite, the company held its annual Blood & Guts matches. The matches, which are basically their version of WarGames, consisted of a bunch of violence and carnage (hence the name), both in the women’s and men’s version. The men’s match ended with Adam Copeland giving up to save Will Ospreay from being stabbed with a screwdriver (yeah it was that kind of a match).
Almost immediately after the match was over, Wardlow threw Darby Allin off the top of the double cage and through some tables at ringside. This was the big spot of the night and capped off the evening to a reaction of….well not much. The fans reacted for a moment due to the big spot, as you would have expected, but then the reaction just dies. Outside of the initial pop, there was not much noise and there was only so much of anything other than “ok what’s next?”.
Now, why was that the case? In theory, someone taking that big of a bump with that much of an impact after such an important match should get a huge reaction. That really didn’t happen here though and it’s probably not a good sign for what the fans think about Allin right now. So why was that the case? Well, at least partially, I’m thinking we need to jump back a week.
Josh Alexander's Apron Tombstone Did No Damage To Darby Allin...
The previous week on the October 28 AEW Dynamite, Allin faced Josh Alexander in a match for Allin’s TNT Title. Late in the match, the two of them wound up on the apron, where Alexander gave Allin a jumping Tombstone off the apron through a pair of open chairs on the floor. Thirty four seconds later, Allin kicked out of the cover and two minutes and fifteen seconds after the Tombstone, Allin got a rollup on Alexander to retain the title.
In short, what were fans supposed to think of this? Allin was given one of the most devastating moves in wrestling off the apron and through two chairs onto the floor and was able to kick out just over half a minute later and then went on to win the match. It’s not like this is something new for Allin, who has a history of taking one insane bump after another and often winning the matches in which he takes those bumps. If not during a match, he is regularly getting taken out one way or another, only to pop back up and do his usual thing.
Darby Allin's Invincibility Hurts The Psychology Of His Matches
This is where we get back to the idea of going too far for fans to believe. If Allin can survive this kind of thing, why should I believe that anything is really going to hurt him? He just got dropped down a few feet on his head through steel chairs and more or less shrugged it off to win the match. At that point, he stops being a wrestler and starts being a slasher movie villain who can survive almost anything.
That brings us back to Allin being tossed off of the cage. Just a week before, Allin was presented as basically being indestructible. AEW more or less said that Allin is just going to pop back up from getting dropped on his head through some chairs, so why should crashing through some tables be any different? That’s one problem, but it brings up another side of the same issue going forward.
When I’m watching an Allin match, what is supposed to beat him? He can survive this big move or that big move, but I’m sure that a suplex might be able to keep him down? That’s a bridge that is going to become quite the issue to cross in the future and it seems to have been the case at Blood & Guts. Yeah Allin took a huge crash off the top of the cage. We literally saw him go through something that should have put him on the shelf for months and be back for Blood & Guts a week later.
Restoring Darby Allin's Vulnerability Would Make His Big Spots More Impactful
Now the good thing is that this is not a difficult problem to fix. All you have to do is, say it with me, have Allin get pinned more easily. Rather than having him do these things and survive, just have Allin lose a few times and bring him back to human. Do that enough times and the ridiculous stuff that Allin did can start to be forgotten. It’s been done before and it can be done again. Kane went from being someone who needed to be Tombstoned three times to losing on a pretty regular basis. See how easily it can be done?
Allin’s insane spots are a good example of why a lot of things in modern wrestling don’t have as much staying power. The Tombstone off the apron should have been a big deal and kept Allin on the shelf for a bit while taking place on a major show. Instead, Allin did it during a relatively nothing match on Dynamite a week before the really big match. That’s in addition to it being against Alexander, who has won three singles matches in AEW since his debut in April 2025, and got to put his knees at risk for a spot that is barely going to be remembered. The more I think about it, the more I wonder who it was for in the first place.
Spots like that Tombstone off the apron having pretty much no effect have a bigger impact than they seem. At the end of the day, Allin kicking out of a move like that so quickly takes away so much of the suspension of disbelief. Allin goes from being a wrestler to someone who can’t be stopped.
It took place in a match that didn’t really matter, which makes it all the worse when it causes a big spot like the one after Blood & Guts to mean nothing. If it seems to be bringing things that far down for the most hardcore fans, how much damage do you think it’s doing for more casual fans? It’s too much and needs to slow down, which can be done pretty easily, if AEW will actually bothering to fix anything.
Do you agree?
Yes, it's too much.
No, his matches are just fine.
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