Pro wrestling is a tough business.
Darby Allin and Sting are aware of this.
The fan-favorite All Elite Wrestling duo have endured a number of injuries as a result of their crowd-pleasing in-ring styles, and during a recent "Hawk vs. Wolf" podcast appearance, the TNT Champion spoke about exactly that.
Featured below are some of the highlights.
On how Sting dislocated his knee during last year’s Grand Slam Rampage matchup against the House of Black: "It was crazy. In the middle of the match in Arthur Ashe [Stadium], it’s like 20,000 people there in New York. In the middle of a match, his knee dislocates and I hear him screaming and he’s trying to put it back in place and it’s locked up… No (I didn’t physically see his knee dislocate in real time) because he has all these long pants on and stuff… But it was insane how he just finished the match. I was like, ‘Holy crap. This is insane.’"
On how he got badly messed up prior to Sting’s first AEW matchup in front of fans at Double or Nothing 2021: "It’s his first live match back in front of an audience and a week later, I was filming some skating with Jaws [Aaron Homoki] down at the ‘Gates of Hell’ in Phoenix, Arizona and then the video I sent you where I went down it but hit the crack and then flew into the wall and then I thought I broke my wrist and my kneecap all at once and I’m laying there in blood and then I’m in a red ant hill and sh*t and I was like, ‘Oh God.’ And then I was contemplating going to the hospital but I told Jaws, ‘I’m gonna sit in your bathtub for two hours and if I piss blood, I’m gonna go to the hospital but if I don’t, I won’t go…’ I was in such pain (is why I opted to go the bath route). The thing was it was a week before he made his big return on pay-per-view and the whole week, I was limping, my knee. I was icing like crazy and I didn’t know how to tell anybody that I flew into a wall skateboarding because it was on pay-per-view, it was so much riding on this match so I showed up and I told everyone, ‘Yeah, I was training and then I smashed my knee’ and they’re like, ‘Dude, you’re really messed up’ but, I low-key told Sting behind the scenes. He’s like, ‘What really happened to you?’ Because he knows I’m crazy outside the ring and do all this sh*t and then I showed him the video and he started laughing but that was pretty stressful."
Check out the complete Darby Allin interview at Apple.com. H/T to POST Wrestling for transcribing the above quotes.