Darby Allin: This Is Bigger Than Wrestling To Me

SRS’ Editor’s note: the following is an editorial column from Sour Graps Society member E.A. Moon. We thank them for their permission to publish.

“Da sind tausend Strahlen
Wie gebrochenes Licht
Du scheinst immer, immer, immer” -Siovo “Gebrochenes Licht”

Rough translation: To me, you are a thousand rays of broken light, always, always, forever.

I haven’t written a column in nearly a year, and what compelled me to do so forces me to break a rule I made
when I returned: I’m going to have to write about something personal. If that’s not your thing, you’re free to
leave. I didn’t make this for you.

I haven’t felt something this deeply about wrestling since Larry Sweeney died just over 15 years ago.

To some, it may be hyperbole to compare the two things, but I have no other basis of comparison. Hear me
out.

I don’t know Darby Allin. I’ve never met him, I likely never will.

But I’ve known Darby Allins. Those people, the Darby Allins of my life, are the reason I’m writing this
column, and I do not expect anyone who is upset about what happened last night to understand this. That’s
okay, I’m not trying to persuade you. I didn’t make this for you.

If you’ve ever been lost, truly broken, unable to see anything in the future, and wondering what the point of
everything is, I’m speaking to you.

If you’ve ever felt forgotten, abandoned, hopeless, I’m speaking to you.

If you’ve ever had someone whose name you didn’t even know make the difference between life and death for
you, I’m speaking to you.

To me, you are a thousand rays of broken light.

I don’t know Darby Allin, but as I slip my Hoodlum denim jacket over my shirt on a mild April Minnesota
day, I’m doing more than supporting one of my favorite wrestlers.

Darby Allin isn’t my favorite wrestler. That’s not what matters to me right now. Darby Allin, to me, is more
important than wrestling, because he brings about visceral memories for me in a time where affording a
denim jacket only would’ve been possible if someone gave it to me out of pity, or if I borrowed it from
someone with no actual intention of giving it back. Nevermind the pink Sherpas of the Hoodlum brand I
have, something I loved so much that I had to buy a second one that wouldn’t be ruined by my ridiculous
hiking miles in the depths of Minnesota’s winter. A jacket that was a hundred dollars was a beam of refracted
light that only touched the outer edges of my peripheral vision when it needed to be focused on survival, and
anyone who knows that feeling realizes how dangerous that can be.

I didn’t have it as bad as most, and I won’t pretend otherwise. I spent very few nights on the actual street, and
even when I did, it was in my shitty car and not roughsleeping. But I did spend several years of my early
adulthood without a fixed address, and part of that was my own pride for not wanting to go back to my
parents and admit they were right. I’m not saying I didn’t do this to myself in some ways, but I have these
experiences nonetheless.

I’ve slept on a lot of couches and living room floors. I’ve also watched the sun come up on the world before
most of it wakes up, reclined in the seat of a car that would’ve been scrap metal for anyone else. The stereo
removed a long time ago, not even a fifth gear on the shifter, and absorbing all the warmness of a tribal
wrestling fan the day their least favorite wrestler wins a championship; these are days that are decades
separated, years refracted only through memory and progress to the point that I probably wouldn’t even
know my younger self if I walked past them on the street here in Minneapolis. Even for those who have been
there, sometimes we are invisible to the spectrum of light that emanates from the skyscrapers and the still
audible calls of the broken and desperate deep within the darkest corners of consciousness.

Maybe it was when this young adult spent a year sleeping on someone’s living room floor in exchange for
some of the benefits of a relationship-type situation that was in no way equitable or reciprocated, but it was
better than not having it.

Maybe it was when an ex-marine took this 16-year-old kid out to “learn how to box” only to spend five
rounds bare-knuckle beating them near unconscious without even teaching them how to defend themselves
or strike back.

Maybe it was when five people were chasing this 19-year-old kid after being set up, walking into a situation of
which they were unaware just to be deposed, and then “rescued” by a concerned mom encouraging them to
get their life together, or at least that’s what they were deciphering from the slurred speech of her after half a
case of Yuengling. It was rural Pennsylvania, after all.

But that would be dishonest. Not every experience I had without a home translates to something this
powerful. In fact, most of them don’t.

It wasn’t the bad things, and there were plenty. It wasn’t the discomfort, or the shame. It wasn’t even the
ticking clock on a friend’s face the minute one took them up on that offer of “if you ever need anything,” the
one when they never thought one would actually take them up on it, and they realized they said that to make
themselves feel better, not offer any Samaritan-adjacent aid to someone in need. The kind that was
exacerbated when they realize that someone without a home staying on their couch does things like eat, sleep,
use the bathroom at inconvenient times, or something truly ridiculous like making a noise. Can you imagine,
someone took pity upon you and you have the nerve to remind them that you’re there by your footsteps
creaking on that loose floorboard when you wake up from a night terror to get a glass of water in the middle
of the night? The audacity!

No, it’s the one who helped.

Not just one. The many anonymous helpers. The ones who never offered their real names, but what they
tagged on railroad cars before they headed off to their next undetermined destination. The names that would
sound silly to those who only know these stories by sad hood movies or exaggerated retellings of those who
now are telling you their seven secrets to success to make money from those who can’t afford to spend it so
that they too can join an MLM and have wealth beyond their wildest imagination, not remembering that, at
one point, your wildest imagination was eating a meal without even having to pick through the parts that
would make you sick.

Those are the Darby Allins I know.

Darby Allin showed up and chased off the person kicking me in the stomach on North Pitt Street at 2 in the
morning. His canvas jacket with the Misfits patch on it fluttering in the wind as he shouted a warning toward
the person who was just as desperate as I was, but who acted out on someone perceived as weaker, one who
wouldn’t fight back, just like a 16-year-old kid being punched by a marine over and over again.

Darby Allin took me to the doctor. Not the real doctor with fancy degrees and standards of cleanliness, but
the doctor who slept in the cemetery and had stolen bandaids and read medical journals. The person who had
a foot-high mohawk frozen in place from Elmer’s glue pilfered from a Staples seven weeks ago, and who
weaponized their appearance to subvert low expectations, reducing people with institutional educations to
sputtering messes, because they read the same books the students did just to stimulate their intellect and pass
the time under the stars before they roamed to the next town. Darby Allin made sure that maybe Mohawk
had used a little bit that night, but not so much that they couldn’t butterfly bandage an eyebrow wound
without accidentally pushing the adhesive onto my eyelashes. Even those with no standards to speak of had
limits.

Darby Allin spent some of the change in their pocket that they could’ve used for their own meal and made
sure I didn’t go hungry that night. Or maybe they lifted it from the 24-hour Giant, slipping it into their canvas
coat and knowing that they were invisible to even those a few steps from roughsleeping themselves. I didn’t
ask questions.

Darby Allin brought me to a party with people much older than me who had no clue what I was doing there
but also didn’t question when I spent twenty minutes trying not to eat every ruffle chip in the bowl, guarding
it with both my arms because at any moment, someone could come take it away. Darby Allin had friends of
all economic and social backgrounds, but they didn’t belong to any of them. Darby Allin never used their
social currency with people who liked them unless they needed it.

Darby Allin found a charity that allowed people a place to sleep in exchange for doing housework on
unfinished apartments. Paint the wall during the day, sleep on the floor at night. Working without making
money, but knowing the elements would not be a factor afterward. Was it above board? Probably not, but

Darby Allin didn’t concern themselves with trivialities like whether the local government was paying attention.

I knew more than one Darby Allin. Darby Allin did terrible things sometimes. Darby Allin had their own
flaws, their own vices, and sometimes Darby Allin ended up dead because the pain got too much or they
didn’t get out of the way in time or someone who hated Darby Allin got revenge for that kid they protected.

It wasn’t me, as far as I knew, but I would’ve convinced myself otherwise if it was. That was guilt I couldn’t
live with and also manage to make myself continue another day. One negotiates what they allow themselves to
have in their present mind in order to find a way to make it to the next day. Putting things in the sleeping
mind was a self-preservation tactic where conscience and morality weren’t considerations.

When I saw Darby Allin the wrestler for the first time, I knew I recognized him. The more he talked, the
more I saw how he walked about the world, the more I knew I’d seen him before.

When I saw him win the TNT title at the first Dynamite in Seattle, I thought maybe I’d witnessed the
pinnacle of his rise, and a long-dormant part of my sleeping mind was awakened, like a thousand rays of
broken light that may be dimly illuminated, but never truly die out. One can make themselves forget, but
some scars never completely heal over. Every moment in your life, good and bad; every decision; every time
someone went out of their way for you at their own expense, brought you to this exact moment in time and
made you who you are in this present situation, whatever it is.

So when I saw someone in the SGS Dynamite chat trashing Darby Allin’s eventual championship victory last
night, it wasn’t my current self that responded. It wasn’t the person with a steady job with benefits, nearly two
decades removed from knowing what it was like to run away in the middle of the night before getting kicked
out by someone’s patience wearing out, coming back to find your stuff in the vestibule, and realizing they
took the only expensive item you owned because they felt you didn’t deserve it. Why would someone without
a home need a digital camera anyway, it’s not like they recorded their last will and testament on it, just in case
they froze to death when the frost came around that night. It’s a privilege to have a digital camera, and since
you were unable to contribute to their kindness by being invisible to them in order to thank them for their
generosity, they extracted your item as a tax so they could throw you out without feeling bad for it. Best to
leave before that happens, even if they call you a “thief in the night” for disappearing without telling them
first. You did make them feel guilty for offering help without actually meaning it though, so isn’t it your fault,
really?

It was that scared kid who responded. The one who didn’t have the words for what their identity meant at the
time, the one who probably couldn’t have articulated what they saw in Darby Allin that made them paint their
face just like him on more than one occasion to go to Dynamite, the one who didn’t have the appropriate
words to thank someone for their authentic kindness rather than pity. That’s the one who lashed out with all
the ferocity of things that were left in a sleeping mind long since past its date of necessity, but even refracted,
broken light is eventually reflected on the darkest places in the universe.

When Darby Allin won the AEW World Championship on Dynamite last night, it wasn’t the storyline that
mattered to me, nor was it the method in which the match was constructed, wondering why it wasn’t Jon

Moxley which would’ve made more sense, or wondering how long the title would be on him before it flipped
to someone else emblematic of the stacked AEW World Title scene.

What mattered to me was when Darby Allin’s legitimate tears flowed down his face as he told MJF to ring the
bell. It spoke much more than a wrestling storyline. Nobody can fake the place from which those emotions
once were formed. Nobody can summon that kind of raw, unbridled passion if they didn’t once know what it
was like to use the grandest dreams inside their head to make sure they didn’t turn off the lights prematurely
on their own consciousness.

When Darby Allin won the AEW World Championship last night, I just felt that part of myself in my distant
past smiling a little bit brighter that day, because someone who went out of their way for me at the worst time
in my life didn’t succumb to the elements or the dangers of transient existence. He made it, and if he can
make it, maybe I can too.

Someday.