Darby Allin will challenge MJF for the AEW World Championship on April 15, when AEW Dynamite Spring BreakThru airs live at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT on TBS and streams on HBO Max from Everett, Washington. The title match lands after Allin beat Andrade El Ídolo at Dynasty to earn the shot and after MJF kept the championship by defeating Kenny Omega in the main event.
For Allin, it is another chance to finish a pursuit that has followed him since the earliest days of AEW. The promotion said the bout is “an AEW World Title match that could bring Darby Allin’s career full circle,” and asked whether he can achieve his ultimate goal of becoming AEW World Champion. That question has been sharpened by the path MJF has taken to keep him away from the belt.
Allin and MJF last met one-on-one in the opening match of Full Gear 2021, when MJF beat him with a headlock takeover after using his Dynamite Diamond Ring. MJF later retained the AEW World Championship in a Four-Way against Allin, Jungle Jack Perry and Sammy Guevara at Double or Nothing 2023, extending a rivalry that has never really gone quiet.
The road to this title match was just as deliberate. MJF had gone into business with Don Callis to keep Allin away from the championship, and Callis put Andrade El Ídolo in the way of Allin’s chase at Dynasty. Even with damage from the Don Callis Family, Allin still beat Andrade and earned the next shot at MJF.
AEW said the match was made official only three days earlier, but that it felt built over the course of the company’s history. The setting adds another layer: Everett is about 20 minutes from where Allin began his wrestling training, and Spring BreakThru is being pushed as the one-year anniversary of Dynamite becoming the longest-running primetime professional wrestling program in Turner Sports history.
MJF has already left Allin behind once with a ring-assisted win and again through a championship defense in a Four-Way. Now he meets him with the title on the line and with less than four months since Dynasty’s path was set, in a city close to the start of Allin’s own career. That is why this match feels less like a new chapter than the one AEW has been steering toward since Day 1.