Darby Allin really wanted to be part of All Elite Wrestling.
During a new appearance on the DDP SnakePit podcast, Darby Allin shared how he ended up getting signed by AEW. Darby says Cody Rhodes saw some of his work and took interest and it lead him to take out a loan to pay off an existing contract, all in the hopes of getting signed to the company that was still in the works.
“So I was doing this show [for] Northeast Wrestling against Pentagon, who is also in AEW. Crazy wild man, but Cody saw that match. And the time, Cody thought I was the crash test dummy, but he actually saw me work a match where it was more than just taking gnarly bumps. He asked what my contract status was, and at the time, I was signed with another little promotion. The moment that I heard that Cody was interested — long story short — I paid $12,000 to get out of my contract. I took a loan out and I remember I used to hit Cody up every day, blow his phone up, and he would never really answer.”
As an aside, DDP explained how Cody’s father, Dusty Rhodes would not pick up calls either. DDP said Dusty would call back two weeks later and rant about leaving messages that DDP didn’t respond to as a rib, then said Cody won’t answer unless it’s someone on a certain level. DDP joked that Cody sucks at texting and he won’t hear from him for days, then Darby shared more details about the loan.
“I didn’t care who I pissed off. That’s why I hit him up, is this for sure? I’m taking $12,000 out of a loan, I need to know what’s going on. This is before Double Or Nothing was even going, I had heard a new company was starting up. This was before TV was even talked about. I was like ‘this is crazy.’ All I heard when they were starting it was the words ‘creative freedom’ and I was like ‘that’s where I need to be.’ I just hit Cody up a bunch and then eventually I went to his house and we talked.”
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