When asked if the climb ever pushed him to his mental breaking point, Darby Allin interestingly claimed that this was never the case, and that’s why he made his climb such a public ordeal. “At the end of the day, all you have is your word. And if I say I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it,” he explained. “So, when I said I was going to bring the AEW flag on top of the world, there was no turning back! I would die on that mountain before I turned back.”

Mount Everest has been notorious for the number of people who die while trying to reach its peak, and Allin claims that he saw several dead bodies on his way to the top. “They ask you, right when you first get there, ‘Are you willing to die for this?’ ‘Cause if you’re not? Go. Leave. Go home!” he added, expressing that being willing to die is the ultimate definition. “The way I live my life, I feel like I have lived more in one year than people do in their whole entire life.”

Allin further expressed how grateful he is for his journey climbing Everest, and described it as a self-journey of discovery. “There’s nothing more humbling than sitting there and looking at these bodies, and knowing that could be you… And every day you’re just fixated on surviving.” During the same interview, Allin further opened up about the climb and how he realized he felt nothing during milestones in AEW.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit “The Ariel Helwani Show” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.