Speaking of Darby, this was published in the observer this week.
I just wanted to note this letter that I got after the Allin angle with Jericho, which is actually a letter I got three years ago, but was sent again because it's more timely now. "Now, this isn't new or anything, but I want to just highlight a couple of points because there's a lot of folks who don't understand the turmoil and garbage that Darby had gone through in the business to get where he's at today. I went into wrestling at 29, which was just a side thing for me. The first day I went in, we were doing drills, and I saw Darby perform them, and my mouth dropped, everything was smooth, fluid, perfect. I have matches and drills on micro VHSs somewhere from the garage where you can see him do some of the most smoothest old school, catch/chain British style wrestling you've ever seen. Yes, he's been pushed into a slight corner where he does some extra crazy stuff because that's his nature, he handles pain well; however, it wasn't always like that. He went to a number of legends wrestling camps, ROH tryouts, and various other seminars - all those older guys, they all told him the same fucking thing to his face: "You're too small, you're not going to get any where in the business, it doesn't matter if you're good in the ring, you won't draw". I would be a fly on the wall as he would constantly get piss taken out of him by the 'you're too small' talk in the garage, `You're great but you won't be anything' talks. It killed Darby... just fucking killed him - he's so dedicated to this business. Luckily... Gabe (Sapolsky) saw something in him, but in order for him to differentiate himself he had to go back to his skateboarder roots of just hurting himself through stunts or something crazy. I mean, he's nuts, but he's not stupid. Darby is an incredibly nice person; more over, he's an incredible wrestler, his selling is top notch, and when we were in a Negro Navarro wrestling camp, Navarro always wanted to work with him. Darby would help me, and even though I was the older dude with a full time job, he would help me work through so many athletic feats. I look up to him, and even today, despite being retired, he's the one person in the ring that I would trust with my life. Anyway, my point to all this is that I hope folks can see that underneath his crazy ass stunts that he's incredibly talented. And, it's this old school mentality that pushes these young guys to do some of this crazy shit. I'm worried about him, but I'm hoping AEW gives him the opportunity to be able to show off that other side of him that most people don't realize that's there - because it's really good."
