Sting Recalls First Impressions Of Darby Allin, Says Allin Enhanced His AEW Run

Sting credits Darby Allin for helping make his AEW run as good as it was, and recently recalled his first impressions of Allin. Sting and Allin were inseparable during the Icon’s time in the ring in AEW, all the way up to Sting’s retirement match at AEW Revolution 2024.

Since Sting’s exit from the ring, Allin has continued to rise and now reigns as the AEW World Champion. The two spoke with Yahoo! Uncrowned for a new interview and Sting talked about his time with Allin and more. You can see highlights below:

On His Initial Impressions of Allin:

“He had this ability in the ring to be very believable, a risk-taker. We all know that to the point of, ‘Come on Darby, this is insanity what you’re doing here.’ But he’s somebody who’s just balls to the walls every single day. It doesn’t matter if there’s 150 people if he’s doing an independent show, or 20,000 people or 70,000 people. He’s the same no matter what.”

On Their Partnership:

“I had somebody like Ric Flair that had the ability to make or break me. And I think I probably had the ability to do the same thing with Darby, even though we weren’t opponents, we were on the same team. But I saw something in him, he saw something in me, and the rest just clicked.”

On Allin Enhancing His Retirement Run:

“I don’t know how else to say it, but I’m convinced that without Darby, maybe I could have made it a good three and half, four-year run, but it wouldn’t have been nearly the same magnitude. It wouldn’t have been as good. It wouldn’t have been as fun.

“This is something like a God-ordained thing, it seems, because Darby was real quick to figure out what my strengths and weaknesses were. And of course, I knew his as well. We kind of worked together on that to help [each other]. He would help me overcome, I would help him overcome. And even from creative ideas, in-ring stuff, the physicality of it all, it was just a great synergy that we both had together. Man, I’m convinced that he’s the only guy I could have done it with.”

On Allin’s Leadership Abilities:

“He’s got a leadership quality about him. I told Tony Khan at one point, I said, I think he’s going to end up running the company at some point or he could. But he has no interest in doing that at all. But he could be somebody that could right the ship when you’re getting off course.”