During his appearance on AEW Unrestricted Darby Allin revealed why he turned down a WWE Tryout:

"Back then, they messaged me and asked me if I was interested in coming down. At the time, I was like, I’m not trying to sound like I’m too good for it, but I was already like you either want me or you don’t. I’m not going to try out for this because you already know what I can do based off the company I was wrestling for. They work so close with WWE, and I was already wrestling all of their wrestlers like Chris Hero or Velveteen Dream. You already know what I can do.

The people I see get tryouts, it’s such a joke. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. I’m not going to sit here and be this clown. Then I thought about it. I was like f–k, I don’t even want to go there anymore. That’s when I started talking to Cody more and more, and I told them like look, I see the writing on the wall. I ain’t gonna play this game where I go there and be a cruiserweight, 205 Live person. I ain’t playing that game because then my body of work, my art [and] my promos never see the light of day.

That’s where I was like, I’m not playing these games with these people. There’s thousands of people there and you forget they even exist half the time. I’m not gonna be locked in the Performance Center. So I was like, I’m not doing this. I made that very clear to Cody, and the rest is history."

Transcript courtesy of WrestlingInc.