Rob
03-03-2014, 09:33 AM
The 2014 Royal Rumble match lasted 55 minutes and 9 seconds (55m 09s). This match featured Roman Reigns tossing out 12 superstars with ease before falling victim to Batista. This post includes all of the important numbers you need to know about the timing of the match.
Here is a text graphic that displays much of the information discussed below, including a chronological listing of who the longest lasting men were at any given point in the match. The graphic provides a quick visual way to understand which wrestlers dominated the 2014 Royal Rumble match as time progressed, as well as seeing how crowded the ring was at any given point. And if you really want to dig deeper, the graphic also includes time stamps for when each wrestler stepped foot into the ring as well as time stamps for each wrestler's elimination.
For comparison's sake, here are other versions of this graphic for Royal Rumble matches from 1988, 1992, 1999, 2007, 2011, and 2013.
Survival Times
My definition of the Survival Time for a superstar is the time that lapses between the point when a superstar steps foot into the ring and the time that the superstar's feet hit the floor to signal elimination. This does not include the time it takes for a superstar to make his way from the entrance ramp down to the actual ring.
The average superstar survival time for the 2014 Royal Rumble match was 12m 00s and the median survival time was 6m 21s.
Here is the full list of survival times for all 30 superstars:
49m 15s: CM Punk
48m 33s: Seth Rollins
33m 49s: Dean Ambrose
33m 44s: Roman Reigns
28m 13s: Sheamus
20m 53s: Cody Rhodes
16m 59s: Antonio Cesaro
15m 04s: Luke Harper
12m 52s: Batista
12m 33s: Kofi Kingston
12m 08s: Jack Swagger
12m 02s: The Miz
11m 51s: Goldust
7m 47s: Jimmy Uso
6m 43s: Alexander Rusev
5m 58s: Dolph Ziggler
4m 48s: Erick Rowan
4m 22s: Jey Uso
3m 50s: Ryback
2m 48s: Alberto Del Rio
2m 46s: Fandango
2m 42s: Big E. Langston
2m 30s: Kevin Nash
2m 08s: Damien Sandow
2m 00s: Rey Mysterio
1m 27s: El Torito
0m 56s: Kane
0m 29s: R-Truth
0m 25s: The Great Khali
0m 18s: John Bradshaw Layfield
The bottom 5 names on this list did not survive long enough to make it to the next waiting period. 4 of them didn't even last a full minute
11 of the 30 participants were eliminated in under 3 minutes. The total combined survival time of these 11 men was 18m 29s. Cody Rhodes lasted longer than all 11 of those men combined.
Big E. Langston may have had the most disappointing Royal Rumble performance out of everyone relative to expectations. He only lasted 2m 42s and did not eliminate anybody from the match.
Del Rio didn't fare much better than Langston, as he lasted only 2m 48s with no eliminations to his credit.
The Great Khali has survived less than 2 minutes in 5 of his 8 career Royal Rumble match appearances. He has surpassed 4 minutes only one time.
The last time R-Truth survived for more than 5 minutes in a Royal Rumble match was in 2009.
Mysterio's 2006 record survival time of over 62 minutes will be awfully hard to beat in a 30-man match with 90-second intervals. Since then, no 30-man Royal Rumble match has even lasted a full hour.
No iron man has even reached 50 minutes since Rey's achievement. Starting with 2007, the 4 closest men to Rey's time have been HHH in 2009 (49m 55s), Ziggler in 2013 (49m 48s), Mysterio in 2009 (49m 24s), and Punk in 2014 (49m 15s).
This is the 4th consecutive Royal Rumble match where the number one entrant became the iron man. Punk has done it twice in that span.
The character Kane has lasted under 2 minutes in 6 of his 15 career Royal Rumble matches. He has lasted under 4 minutes in 8 of these 15 matches.
Entrance Times
Here are the entrance times for each superstar involved. This is the amount of time that passed between an entrance buzzer going off and when the superstar finally stepped foot into the actual ring. The first two entrants (CM Punk, Seth Rollins) are excluded because their entrances took place prior to the start of the match.
0m 32s: JBL
0m 30s: The Great Khali
0m 26s: Nash
0m 24s: Rusev
0m 23s: El Torito
0m 18s: Cesaro, Harper, Rowan
0m 17s: Swagger, Fandango
0m 16s: Reigns
0m 14s: Kane
0m 13s: ADR
0m 12s: Ziggler, Sheamus, Ryback, Batista
0m 11s: Ambrose
0m 10s: Cody, Kofi, Goldust, Jey Uso, Rey
0m 09s: Sandow
0m 08s: Jimmy Uso, Truth, Miz, Langston
The entrance times for JBL and The Great Khali were each longer than their respective survival times.
These numbers add up to about 6m 56s of total entrance time out of the entire 55m 09s match. That means that for about 12.6% of the match, at least one superstar was in midst of his entrance.
Time Between Buzzers
Justin Roberts stated that there would be 90 second waiting intervals between each entrant. How well did WWE stick to that claim? Here are the waiting times between all 28 buzzers, in chronological order:
1m 31s: Buzzer 1 - Damien Sandow
1m 31s: Buzzer 2 - Cody Rhodes
1m 32s: Buzzer 3 - Kane
1m 30s: Buzzer 4 - Alexander Rusev
1m 31s: Buzzer 5 - Jack Swagger
1m 32s: Buzzer 6 - Kofi Kingston
1m 31s: Buzzer 7 - Jimmy Uso
1m 30s: Buzzer 8 - Goldust
2m 26s: Buzzer 9 - Dean Ambrose
1m 32s: Buzzer 10 - Dolph Ziggler
1m 31s: Buzzer 11 - R-Truth
1m 53s: Buzzer 12 - Kevin Nash
1m 39s: Buzzer 13 - Roman Reigns
1m 38s: Buzzer 14 - The Great Khali
1m 41s: Buzzer 15 - Sheamus
1m 36s: Buzzer 16 - The Miz
1m 30s: Buzzer 17 - Fandango
1m 32s: Buzzer 18 - El Torito
2m 09s: Buzzer 19 - Antonio Cesaro
1m 32s: Buzzer 20 - Luke Harper
1m 33s: Buzzer 21 - Jey Uso
1m 30s: Buzzer 22 - John Bradshaw Layfield
1m 40s: Buzzer 23 - Erick Rowan
1m 33s: Buzzer 24 - Ryback
1m 31s: Buzzer 25 - Alberto Del Rio
1m 31s: Buzzer 26 - Batista
1m 47s: Buzzer 27 - Big E. Langston
1m 31s: Buzzer 28 - Not Daniel Bryan
The timing of the waiting intervals started out close to perfect, with each of the first 8 buzzers going off within 2 seconds of the 90-second goal.
The reason it took 2m 26s for the countdown to Ambrose's entrance was because they needed to fit the entirety of Rusev's elimination and Kingston's elimination avoidance spot all into the same waiting period. It is no coincidence that right after Kingston jumped back into the ring, the 10-second countdown clock appeared on the screen for Ambrose's arrival.
Kingston's spot where he removed Jack Swagger's boot was very likely the reason Nash's countdown clock took 1m 52s. Once again, right after Kofi rolled back into the ring, the 10-second countdown clock magically appeared on the screen.
It took 2m 09s for the countdown to Cesaro's entrance because they needed to fit all of El Torito's spots with Punk, Fandango, and Reigns into one waiting period. As soon as Reigns eliminated El Torito, the 10-second countdown clock for Cesaro's entrance began ticking down.
It's possible that the waiting period between Batista and Langston was extended to 1m 47s to allow Batista time to eliminate Ryback and ADR without an entrance interrupting the flow.
Overall, 19 of the 28 waiting periods landed within 5 seconds of the 90-second goal.
In a perfectly timed match, the final buzzer (signaling Not Daniel Bryan's entrance) would have gone off 42m 00s after the start of the match. In reality, this buzzer went off at 45m 23s.
Ring Crowdedness
I also wanted to take a look at how the ring filled up with superstars as the match progressed. If you add up each wrestler's survival time, it results in a total survival time of 5h 59m 53s. Given that the match lasted a total of 55m 09s, that comes out to an average of 6.5 competitors in the ring at any given second.
Here is a better way to understand how many men were in the ring at any given time. This list shows the total time that the ring was filled with an exact number of discrete superstars at once:
3m 56s: 2 participants (7.1% of total match time)
6m 54s: 3 participants (12.5%)
4m 08s: 4 participants (7.5%)
3m 02s: 5 participants (5.5%)
5m 00s: 6 participants (9.1%)
7m 33s: 7 participants (13.7%)
9m 37s: 8 participants (17.4%)
10m 19s: 9 participants (18.7%)
4m 21s: 10 participants (7.9%)
0m 19s: 11 participants (0.6%)
The most crowded segment of the match came between the time stamps of 33m 05s and 48m 09s, as the ring was filled with at least 8 men for that entire duration. Many of these extra guys were there to get tossed out by Roman Reigns and Batista.
Overall, the ring was filled with at least 8 men for 44.6% of the match.
The ring contained 4 men or less for 27.1% of the match.
Punk, Rollins, Ambrose, Reigns, and Sheamus were all simultaneously in the ring together for a total time of 23m 53s.
Punk, Rollins, Ambrose, and Reigns were all simultaneously in the ring together for a total time of 27m 08s.
The most eliminations in any single waiting interval was 3, and this occurred thrice:
Kingston, Ziggler, and Nash were eliminated in the waiting period between Reigns and Khali.
Khali, Cody, and Goldust were eliminated in the waiting period between Khali and Sheamus.
Rowan, Ryback, and Del Rio were eliminated in the waiting period between Batista and Langston.
The most time that lapsed without a single elimination was 7m 27s, and this took place very early in the match between the eliminations of Kane and Rusev. 5 consecutive countdown clocks went off in this time span singaling the entrances of Rusev, Swagger, Kingston, Jimmy Uso, and Goldust.
Miscellaneous
Did anybody else spot Kane in view of the camera for a second while JBL was making his entrance? This was 30m 12s after Kane was eliminated by Punk! Somebody screwed up there; I don't think Kane was supposed to be visible to the home viewer.
Batista's good luck of the draw continued in 2014. His entrance numbers in his career Royal Rumble matches have been 28, 28, 8, 30, 28.
Michael Cole said that this was Kane's 15th consecutive Royal Rumble match, but that is not true. Kane fought John Cena in a singles match at the 2012 Royal Rumble and did not participate in the actual Royal Rumble match that year.
This means that The Great Khali has extended his active streak of now 8 consecutive Royal Rumble matches.
Xavier Woods was listed as an official entrant but did not get a spot in the match.
End of the Match
Once the final entrant (Not Daniel Bryan) entered the ring, the match essentially turned into a 10-man Battle Royal to the finish between Punk, Rollins, Ambrose, Reigns, Sheamus, Cesaro, Harper, Batista, Langston, and Mysterio. This final segment of the Royal Rumble match lasted 9m 36s, and at that point Batista emerged as the winner of the match.
That's all you need to know about the timing of the 2014 Royal Rumble match. Which numbers do you find to be the most interesting?
-Cagesideseats.com
Here is a text graphic that displays much of the information discussed below, including a chronological listing of who the longest lasting men were at any given point in the match. The graphic provides a quick visual way to understand which wrestlers dominated the 2014 Royal Rumble match as time progressed, as well as seeing how crowded the ring was at any given point. And if you really want to dig deeper, the graphic also includes time stamps for when each wrestler stepped foot into the ring as well as time stamps for each wrestler's elimination.
For comparison's sake, here are other versions of this graphic for Royal Rumble matches from 1988, 1992, 1999, 2007, 2011, and 2013.
Survival Times
My definition of the Survival Time for a superstar is the time that lapses between the point when a superstar steps foot into the ring and the time that the superstar's feet hit the floor to signal elimination. This does not include the time it takes for a superstar to make his way from the entrance ramp down to the actual ring.
The average superstar survival time for the 2014 Royal Rumble match was 12m 00s and the median survival time was 6m 21s.
Here is the full list of survival times for all 30 superstars:
49m 15s: CM Punk
48m 33s: Seth Rollins
33m 49s: Dean Ambrose
33m 44s: Roman Reigns
28m 13s: Sheamus
20m 53s: Cody Rhodes
16m 59s: Antonio Cesaro
15m 04s: Luke Harper
12m 52s: Batista
12m 33s: Kofi Kingston
12m 08s: Jack Swagger
12m 02s: The Miz
11m 51s: Goldust
7m 47s: Jimmy Uso
6m 43s: Alexander Rusev
5m 58s: Dolph Ziggler
4m 48s: Erick Rowan
4m 22s: Jey Uso
3m 50s: Ryback
2m 48s: Alberto Del Rio
2m 46s: Fandango
2m 42s: Big E. Langston
2m 30s: Kevin Nash
2m 08s: Damien Sandow
2m 00s: Rey Mysterio
1m 27s: El Torito
0m 56s: Kane
0m 29s: R-Truth
0m 25s: The Great Khali
0m 18s: John Bradshaw Layfield
The bottom 5 names on this list did not survive long enough to make it to the next waiting period. 4 of them didn't even last a full minute
11 of the 30 participants were eliminated in under 3 minutes. The total combined survival time of these 11 men was 18m 29s. Cody Rhodes lasted longer than all 11 of those men combined.
Big E. Langston may have had the most disappointing Royal Rumble performance out of everyone relative to expectations. He only lasted 2m 42s and did not eliminate anybody from the match.
Del Rio didn't fare much better than Langston, as he lasted only 2m 48s with no eliminations to his credit.
The Great Khali has survived less than 2 minutes in 5 of his 8 career Royal Rumble match appearances. He has surpassed 4 minutes only one time.
The last time R-Truth survived for more than 5 minutes in a Royal Rumble match was in 2009.
Mysterio's 2006 record survival time of over 62 minutes will be awfully hard to beat in a 30-man match with 90-second intervals. Since then, no 30-man Royal Rumble match has even lasted a full hour.
No iron man has even reached 50 minutes since Rey's achievement. Starting with 2007, the 4 closest men to Rey's time have been HHH in 2009 (49m 55s), Ziggler in 2013 (49m 48s), Mysterio in 2009 (49m 24s), and Punk in 2014 (49m 15s).
This is the 4th consecutive Royal Rumble match where the number one entrant became the iron man. Punk has done it twice in that span.
The character Kane has lasted under 2 minutes in 6 of his 15 career Royal Rumble matches. He has lasted under 4 minutes in 8 of these 15 matches.
Entrance Times
Here are the entrance times for each superstar involved. This is the amount of time that passed between an entrance buzzer going off and when the superstar finally stepped foot into the actual ring. The first two entrants (CM Punk, Seth Rollins) are excluded because their entrances took place prior to the start of the match.
0m 32s: JBL
0m 30s: The Great Khali
0m 26s: Nash
0m 24s: Rusev
0m 23s: El Torito
0m 18s: Cesaro, Harper, Rowan
0m 17s: Swagger, Fandango
0m 16s: Reigns
0m 14s: Kane
0m 13s: ADR
0m 12s: Ziggler, Sheamus, Ryback, Batista
0m 11s: Ambrose
0m 10s: Cody, Kofi, Goldust, Jey Uso, Rey
0m 09s: Sandow
0m 08s: Jimmy Uso, Truth, Miz, Langston
The entrance times for JBL and The Great Khali were each longer than their respective survival times.
These numbers add up to about 6m 56s of total entrance time out of the entire 55m 09s match. That means that for about 12.6% of the match, at least one superstar was in midst of his entrance.
Time Between Buzzers
Justin Roberts stated that there would be 90 second waiting intervals between each entrant. How well did WWE stick to that claim? Here are the waiting times between all 28 buzzers, in chronological order:
1m 31s: Buzzer 1 - Damien Sandow
1m 31s: Buzzer 2 - Cody Rhodes
1m 32s: Buzzer 3 - Kane
1m 30s: Buzzer 4 - Alexander Rusev
1m 31s: Buzzer 5 - Jack Swagger
1m 32s: Buzzer 6 - Kofi Kingston
1m 31s: Buzzer 7 - Jimmy Uso
1m 30s: Buzzer 8 - Goldust
2m 26s: Buzzer 9 - Dean Ambrose
1m 32s: Buzzer 10 - Dolph Ziggler
1m 31s: Buzzer 11 - R-Truth
1m 53s: Buzzer 12 - Kevin Nash
1m 39s: Buzzer 13 - Roman Reigns
1m 38s: Buzzer 14 - The Great Khali
1m 41s: Buzzer 15 - Sheamus
1m 36s: Buzzer 16 - The Miz
1m 30s: Buzzer 17 - Fandango
1m 32s: Buzzer 18 - El Torito
2m 09s: Buzzer 19 - Antonio Cesaro
1m 32s: Buzzer 20 - Luke Harper
1m 33s: Buzzer 21 - Jey Uso
1m 30s: Buzzer 22 - John Bradshaw Layfield
1m 40s: Buzzer 23 - Erick Rowan
1m 33s: Buzzer 24 - Ryback
1m 31s: Buzzer 25 - Alberto Del Rio
1m 31s: Buzzer 26 - Batista
1m 47s: Buzzer 27 - Big E. Langston
1m 31s: Buzzer 28 - Not Daniel Bryan
The timing of the waiting intervals started out close to perfect, with each of the first 8 buzzers going off within 2 seconds of the 90-second goal.
The reason it took 2m 26s for the countdown to Ambrose's entrance was because they needed to fit the entirety of Rusev's elimination and Kingston's elimination avoidance spot all into the same waiting period. It is no coincidence that right after Kingston jumped back into the ring, the 10-second countdown clock appeared on the screen for Ambrose's arrival.
Kingston's spot where he removed Jack Swagger's boot was very likely the reason Nash's countdown clock took 1m 52s. Once again, right after Kofi rolled back into the ring, the 10-second countdown clock magically appeared on the screen.
It took 2m 09s for the countdown to Cesaro's entrance because they needed to fit all of El Torito's spots with Punk, Fandango, and Reigns into one waiting period. As soon as Reigns eliminated El Torito, the 10-second countdown clock for Cesaro's entrance began ticking down.
It's possible that the waiting period between Batista and Langston was extended to 1m 47s to allow Batista time to eliminate Ryback and ADR without an entrance interrupting the flow.
Overall, 19 of the 28 waiting periods landed within 5 seconds of the 90-second goal.
In a perfectly timed match, the final buzzer (signaling Not Daniel Bryan's entrance) would have gone off 42m 00s after the start of the match. In reality, this buzzer went off at 45m 23s.
Ring Crowdedness
I also wanted to take a look at how the ring filled up with superstars as the match progressed. If you add up each wrestler's survival time, it results in a total survival time of 5h 59m 53s. Given that the match lasted a total of 55m 09s, that comes out to an average of 6.5 competitors in the ring at any given second.
Here is a better way to understand how many men were in the ring at any given time. This list shows the total time that the ring was filled with an exact number of discrete superstars at once:
3m 56s: 2 participants (7.1% of total match time)
6m 54s: 3 participants (12.5%)
4m 08s: 4 participants (7.5%)
3m 02s: 5 participants (5.5%)
5m 00s: 6 participants (9.1%)
7m 33s: 7 participants (13.7%)
9m 37s: 8 participants (17.4%)
10m 19s: 9 participants (18.7%)
4m 21s: 10 participants (7.9%)
0m 19s: 11 participants (0.6%)
The most crowded segment of the match came between the time stamps of 33m 05s and 48m 09s, as the ring was filled with at least 8 men for that entire duration. Many of these extra guys were there to get tossed out by Roman Reigns and Batista.
Overall, the ring was filled with at least 8 men for 44.6% of the match.
The ring contained 4 men or less for 27.1% of the match.
Punk, Rollins, Ambrose, Reigns, and Sheamus were all simultaneously in the ring together for a total time of 23m 53s.
Punk, Rollins, Ambrose, and Reigns were all simultaneously in the ring together for a total time of 27m 08s.
The most eliminations in any single waiting interval was 3, and this occurred thrice:
Kingston, Ziggler, and Nash were eliminated in the waiting period between Reigns and Khali.
Khali, Cody, and Goldust were eliminated in the waiting period between Khali and Sheamus.
Rowan, Ryback, and Del Rio were eliminated in the waiting period between Batista and Langston.
The most time that lapsed without a single elimination was 7m 27s, and this took place very early in the match between the eliminations of Kane and Rusev. 5 consecutive countdown clocks went off in this time span singaling the entrances of Rusev, Swagger, Kingston, Jimmy Uso, and Goldust.
Miscellaneous
Did anybody else spot Kane in view of the camera for a second while JBL was making his entrance? This was 30m 12s after Kane was eliminated by Punk! Somebody screwed up there; I don't think Kane was supposed to be visible to the home viewer.
Batista's good luck of the draw continued in 2014. His entrance numbers in his career Royal Rumble matches have been 28, 28, 8, 30, 28.
Michael Cole said that this was Kane's 15th consecutive Royal Rumble match, but that is not true. Kane fought John Cena in a singles match at the 2012 Royal Rumble and did not participate in the actual Royal Rumble match that year.
This means that The Great Khali has extended his active streak of now 8 consecutive Royal Rumble matches.
Xavier Woods was listed as an official entrant but did not get a spot in the match.
End of the Match
Once the final entrant (Not Daniel Bryan) entered the ring, the match essentially turned into a 10-man Battle Royal to the finish between Punk, Rollins, Ambrose, Reigns, Sheamus, Cesaro, Harper, Batista, Langston, and Mysterio. This final segment of the Royal Rumble match lasted 9m 36s, and at that point Batista emerged as the winner of the match.
That's all you need to know about the timing of the 2014 Royal Rumble match. Which numbers do you find to be the most interesting?
-Cagesideseats.com