How much wrestling actually happened at Royal Rumble 2023?

WWE featured five total matches on the main card of Royal Rumble 2023which occurred on January 28.

The pay-per-view (PPV) main card ran for 4 hours, 22 minutes, and 4 seconds (4 hours, 22 minutes, and 4 seconds). The following is an ordered list of bell times for the five matches that occurred during the event:

• 71m40s: Men’s Royal Rumble
• 61pm 08s: Women’s Royal Rumble
• 19 minutes 13 seconds: Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens
• 7 months, 32 seconds: Bianca Belair vs. Alexa Bliss
• 5 months and 5 s: Bray Wyatt vs. LA Knight

Those times add up to 2 hours, 44 minutes, and 38 seconds, which is roughly 62.8% of the show. For comparison’s sake, the overall match time percentage for all 137 WWE PPVs since the start of 2013 is 53.7%.

The match time percentage of 62.8% is low for a WWE card that has two Royal Rumble matches. This is the first event to have a score of less than 67% on this metric since the addition of the women’s Rumble in 2018.

One of the reasons for this result was Sami Zayn’s angle after the match that ended the show. That corner lasted 13m 16s, longer than the combined match times (12m 37s) for Bliss and Watt.

Hardy’s musical performance lasted 3m 21s. His segment occurred during the period between the women’s Royal Rumble match and Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens. The amount of time that elapsed between the women’s Rumble closing bell and the opening bell of the Romanian match was 28m-08s, which is an extreme score.

Roman’s Entry occurred during that time as well. His entrance music ran for 5 minutes and 05 seconds, the exact same length as the match for Pitch Black. The White/Knight storyline had been brewing for two months, with the disappointing payoff of a bad five-minute match that was more about promoting Mountain Dew than anything else.

White’s entry lasted 4m3s, and the post-match corner featuring Uncle Hoody’s bombing lasted 4m19s.

This is the first time that two Royal Rumble matches have exceeded an hour on the same card. The 2023 men’s Royal Rumble is the tallest 30 player in history.

Were you surprised by any of these results, Cagesiders? Which of the following matches took less (or more) time than you had hoped?