In the aftermath of every WWE pay-per-view card, I like to take a closer look at the individual match times for the event. This post is one month late because I’ve spent way too many hours staring at Bobby Lashley’s ass again while wondering why he and LA Knight did not have a match at WrestleMania 39. But now it’s finally time to revisit the match times of WWE’s biggest weekend of the year.
WrestleMania 39 consisted of two nights of matches that took place on Apr. 1 and Apr. 2 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
The main card of WrestleMania 39 night one (Saturday, Apr. 1) lasted 4 hours, 1 minute, and 30 seconds (4h 01m 30s). Here is a sorted list of the bell-to-bell times for the eight matches that took place:
24m 17s: The Usos vs. Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn
23m 34s: Charlotte Flair vs. Rhea Ripley
16m 15s: Seth Rollins vs. Logan Paul
14m 39s: Becky Lynch, Lita, Trish Stratus vs. Damage CTRL
14m 30s: Rey Mysterio vs. Dominik Mysterio
11m 20s: Austin Theory vs. John Cena
8m 29s: Strowman & Ricochet vs. Street Profits vs. Viking Raiders vs. Alpha Academy
3m 36s: Pat McAfee vs. The Miz
These times add up to 1h 56m 40s, which is roughly 48.3% of the show.
Flair vs. Ripley was the runner-up for the main event spot on this card, but WWE gave it roughly equal time to the actual main event match of The Usos vs. Owens and Zayn. That turned out to be a great decision, of course.
John Cena’s relatively low match time is exactly what I expected given the fact that he only showed up on one episode of Raw to build to this match with Theory, and he wasn’t competing in the main event.
The mid-card men’s tag teams didn’t get much time to work with, but they made the most of it by keeping up a fast pace of seemingly non-stop action from bell-to-bell.
The main card of WrestleMania 39 night two (Sunday, Apr. 2) lasted 3 hours, 42 minutes, and 8 seconds (3h 42m 08s). Here is a sorted list of the bell-to-bell times for the seven matches that took place:
34m 28s: Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes
18m 08s: Edge vs. Finn Balor
16m 36s: GUNTHER vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Sheamus
15m 57s: Bianca Belair vs. Asuka
8m 22s: Rodriguez & Morgan vs. Shotzi & Natalya vs. Rousey & Baszler vs. Green & Deville
4m 55s: Brock Lesnar vs. Omos
2m 12s: The Miz vs. Snoop Dogg and/or Shane McMahon
These times add up to 1h 40m 38s, which is roughly 45.3% of the show.
The match time on this card was dominated by the main event of Reigns vs. Rhodes, whose time nearly equaled the sum of the next two longest matches (Edge, GUNTHER).
There is also a noticeable gap of more than seven minutes in the sorted time between both women’s matches; Bianca Belair vs. Asuka was longer than the sum of the three matches below it on the list.
Finally, I have to once again note that Roman Reigns’ entrance is ridiculously long, even for WrestleMania standards. I clocked in his entrance time here at 7m 19s. That is longer than every individual entrance that the Undertaker or Triple H ever had at WrestleMania.
The longest Undertaker WrestleMania entrance I’ve timed is from WrestleMania 30, which lasted 7m 04s. The longest Triple H WrestleMania entrance I’ve timed is from WrestleMania 32, which lasted 5m 51s.
Those guys are famous for their absurdly long entrances at WrestleMania, but they still have nothing on the Tribal Chief.
The main card of both nights of WrestleMania 39 taken together lasted 7h 43m 38s. The 15 match times add up to 3h 37m 18s, which is roughly 46.9% of the combined show time. For comparison’s sake, the overall match time percentage for all 140 WWE PPVs since the start of 2013 is 53.5%.
WrestleMania events always include a lower percentage of match time than the average PPV (unless the WrestleMania event takes place inside an empty warehouse). This is due to elaborate entrances, Hall of Fame recognition, live music performances, attendance announcements, speaking time for the host(s), extra video packages, backstage segments, rain delays, etc.
With that context in mind, here are the match time percentages for all of the WrestleMania events going back to 2013:
49.7%: WrestleMania 29
51.0%: WrestleMania 30
41.2%: WrestleMania 31
47.5%: WrestleMania 32
44.8%: WrestleMania 33
42.0%: WrestleMania 34
45.1%: WrestleMania 35
54.1%: WrestleMania 36 Night One
57.1%: WrestleMania 36 Night Two
43.6%: WrestleMania 37 Night One
41.5%: WrestleMania 37 Night Two
40.9%: WrestleMania 38 Night One
41.7%: WrestleMania 38 Night Two
48.3%: WrestleMania 39 Night One
45.3%: WrestleMania 39 Night Two
As you can see, both nights of WrestleMania 39 feature a little higher percentage of match time than most of these recent events going back to WrestleMania 32 in 2016.
Are you surprised by any of these results, Cagesiders? Which of these matches received less (or more) time than you hoped for?
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