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Darby Allin is the All Elite Wrestling (AEW) Championship.
He has won the TNT Championship twice, won tag team gold with Sting, climbed Mount Everest and shocked the professional wrestling world last month when he defeated Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) to win the AEW World Championship for the first time.
Allin puts the championship on the line on Sunday when he faces MJF in a hair-against title match at Double or Nothing. If Allin loses, MJF will regain the belt for the third time in his career. If MJF suffers defeat, he will be forced to shave his head bald.
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Darby Allin arrives at Sports Illustrated’s SI The Party at the Cow Palace Arena and Event Center in Daly City, California on February 8, 2026. (Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images)
That’s the type of fearlessness that Allin has brought to AEW since the company started in 2019.
“It’s a willingness to live life to the fullest,” Allin told Pakinomist Digital when asked where the fearlessness comes from. “I got such a zest for life and I feel like the crazier I get, the more mental barriers and more confidence I get. That’s where it comes from. It’s just the determination and the zest for life.
“I feel like I’ve lived a hundred lives in my lifetime. I’ve done so much, and a lot of it is because I have no fear. I have no regrets. I’ve gotten the absolute most out of life. I could die tomorrow and be completely at peace.”
Allin is taking that mindset into New York City. Since winning the AEW World Championship, he has been on a tear, knocking down every challenger that has come his way in an attempt to knock him off his pedestal.
While he has certainly proven himself worthy of holding the title, he said there is still more to do.
“There’s always something to prove,” he said. “The biggest thing to prove this Sunday is that the fight with Max in Seattle wasn’t a fluke. This Sunday at Double or Nothing, that’s the biggest thing I have to prove right now – that it wasn’t a fluke.”
AEW Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman will appear at AEW Dynamite at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona on February 22, 2023. (Joe Camporeale/USA TODAY Sports)
Allin is confident he can beat MJF – in his home state – and take home a piece of his hair too.
“Make a voodoo doll and torture him for the rest of his life,” he said.
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Taking place at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, Double or Nothing promises to be a card full of hard-hitting action.
The map looks like this:
Thekla enters the ring during the women’s pro wrestling event Stardom at the Yokohama Budokan in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan on March 8, 2025. (Etsuo Hara/Getty Images)
- Megan Bayne and Lena Kross vs. Zayda Steel and Vita Van in a 5-minute tag team title eliminator match.
- “Big Boom” AJ, QT Marshall, Mark Briscoe, Orange Cassidy and Roderick Strong vs. Shane Taylor, Anthony Ogogo, Capt. Shawn Dean, Carlie Bravo and Lee Moriarty in a 10-man tag team match.
- Claudio Castagnoli, Daniel Garcia, Wheeler Yuta vs. Anthony Bowens, Hook and Katsuyori Shibata in a trios match.
- Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Konosuke Takeshita for the AEW International Championship.
- Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler (c) vs. Adam Copeland and Christian Cage in an I Quit match for the AEW World Tag Team Championship. If Cope and Cage lose, they must retire as a tag team.
- Chris Jericho, Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, Kenny Omega, Jack Perry, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson vs. Ricochet, Bishop Kaun, Toa Liona, Mark Davis, Andrade El Idolo, Clark Connors and David Finlay in a Stadium Stampede match.
- Thekla (c) vs. Hikaru Shida vs. Jamie Hayter vs. Kris Statlander for the AEW Women’s World Championship.
- Samoa Joe vs. Will Ospreay in a quarterfinal match in the Owen Hart Men’s Tournament.
- Bandido vs. Swerve Strickland in a quarterfinal match at the Owen Hart Men’s Tournament.
- Athena vs. Mina Shirakawa in a quarterfinal match at the Owen Hart Women’s Tournament.
- Jon Moxley (c) vs. Kyle O’Reilly for the AEW Continental Championship.
Allin said pro wrestling fans who have never seen an AEW show before are in for a treat.
Darby Allin competes in the ring during AEW Collision on October 3, 2024 at the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio. (Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire)
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“The unpredictability of what AEW is,” Allin told Pakinomist Digital when asked what first-time AEW viewers could expect. “You can watch any Wednesday, you can watch any Saturday, pay-per-views, whatever night it is, it’s just going to be unpredictable and completely off the wall.
“That’s how I love it. That’s how I love to live my life and that’s how I love to do my wrestling. Yeah, just complete insanity. That’s what they can expect.”
