Darby Allin Reflects On Climbing Mt. Everest, Being Grateful To AEW For Letting Him Do It

Darby Allin recently reflected on his experience of climbing Mt. Everest and how grateful he was to AEW for letting him do it. Allin climbed the famed mountain earlier this year and he spoke on My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox about the experience. You can see some highlights below:

On the experience of climbing Mt. Everest:

“I was just pulling something out of myself climbing that mountain. That’s like — the funnest thing about doing things like that. Where you’re literally risking your life is, who are you going to become on the other side? And that’s like the funnest thing. And I’m like I said I’m grateful. Because I’m essentially in the prime of my career, and the fact that I was able to do that. And get off this hamster wheel for six months and actually do that. I can’t even.”

On if he was burned out:

“No, no, no. Because you live your life for other people. Because this is — there’s no offseason. It’s all year round for whoever knows how long. And then it’s just like, by the time you get out of the hamster wheel, you realize, ‘Oh, there’s so much I wanted to do with my life that I couldn’t do.’ Because you’re trying to make the fans happy, the TV happy, all this stuff happy. But at the end of the day, you’re not really making yourself happy. So that’s like, the fact that it’s like Tony and AEW were like, ‘No, do what you want to do. Fulfill what’s in your heart.’ That’s like the greatest thing. It’s unreal. It’s f**king insane if you really, really think about it. It’s insane.”

On what point during the Everest climb that he really felt fulfilled:

“It’s when I got to the summit. Because when I was climbing day of Camp 4 to the summit, day of the actual summit. There all a sudden was this gnarly line, that we didn’t move for an hour. Like a little bit of a traffic jam. We didn’t move for an hour. And I see people running out of oxygen. And I see them, like their adrenaline stops and they start to freeze. And they’re like, ‘Yo, screw this.’ Like, ‘I’m not going to die on this mountain.’ Because you start to see people like start convulsing up there. And I was like, ‘How am I going –‘ I was like, ‘I have to make it to the summit. Because I gave everybody my word that I was going to summit Mount Everest.’

“And I put so much into this that — there is that thing called summit fever, where you literally are so fixated on making it to the summit that you will die trying. And I fully had that. There was nothing, nobody could tell me to turn around at that point. But I stuck with it and then made it the summit. And I started crying, and I was like ‘Man, I did it.’ That’s when I it really hit me.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.