The 2007 Royal Rumble match lasted 56 minutes and 20 seconds (56m 20s). This match featured The Great Khali tossing out 7 superstars with ease before falling victim to The Undertaker. The Undertaker and HBK then faced off in an epic duel which was capped of with The Undertaker's first ever Royal Rumble victory. 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 2007 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 (version 1, version 2), 2003, 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 2007 Royal Rumble match was 11m 56s and the median survival time was 6m 46s.
Here is the full list of survival times for all 30 superstars.
- 44m 06s: Edge
- 32m 34s: Finlay
- 27m 17s: CM Punk
- 27m 16: Randy Orton
- 24m 11s: Shawn Michaels
- 22m 23s: Shelton Benjamin
- 18m 56s: Matt Hardy
- 17m 54s: Chris Benoit
- 16m 28s: Rob Van Dam
- 13m 22s: Kane
- 13m 16s: The Undertaker
- 10m 22s: Hardcore Holly
- 9m 23s: King Booker
- 7m 33s: Montel Vontavious Porter
- 6m 50s: Gregory Helms
- 6m 42s: Tommy Dreamer
- 6m 24s: Chavo Guerrero
- 6m 18s: Viscera
- 6m 18s: Johnny Nitro (John Morrison)
- 6m 16s: Kevin Thorn
- 5m 41s: Ric Flair
- 5m 27s: Sabu
- 4m 33s: Super Crazy
- 4m 05s: Kenny Dykstra
- 3m 45s: The Great Khali
- 3m 38s: Jeff Hardy
- 3m 32s: Chris Masters
- 3m 20s: Carlito
- 0m 13s: The Sandman
- 0m 07s: The Miz
The main thing that stands out here is that there weren't many extremely brief appearances. Miz and Sandman were the only two men who did not survive long enough to make it to the very next buzzer. In fact everyone else actually survived until at least the next two buzzers.
Since the 2007 Royal Rumble, the only number one entrant with a shorter survival time than Flair's 5m 41s is Dolph Ziggler in 2010.
The 13 Raw superstars had an average survival time of 12m 14s and a median time of 5m 41s. This group includes Edge, Orton, HBK, Benjamin, Viscera, Nitro, Flair, Super Crazy, Dykstra, Khali, Jeff Hardy, Masters, and Carlito. You can see from the huge disparity between average and median here that the times were not smoothly distributed. The first 4 men in the list lasted over 22 minutes each while the remaining 9 men each lasted under 6m 30s.
The 10 Smackdown superstars had an average survival time of 12m 38s and a median time of 11m 20s. This group includes Finlay, Matt Hardy, Benoit, Kane, Undertaker, King Booker, MVP, Helms, Chavo, and Miz.
The 7 ECW Extremists has an average survival time of 10m 24s and a median time of 6m 42s. This group includes Punk, RVD, Holly, Dreamer, Thorn, Sabu, Sandman.
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 (Ric Flair, Finlay) are excluded because their entrances took place prior to the start of the match.
- 0m 33s: The Sandman
- 0m 32s: The Great Khali
- 0m 30s: Viscera, The Undertaker
- 0m 26s: Sabu
- 0m 23s: King Booker
- 0m 19s: MVP, Kane
- 0m 15s: RVD, Chavo
- 0m 13s: Nitro
- 0m 12s: Dykstra, Thorn, HBK, Masters
- 0m 11s: Punk, Carlito
- 0m 10s: Dreamer, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy
- 0m 09s: Edge, Helms
- 0m 08s: Crazy, Benoit, Benjamin
- 0m 07s: Orton, Holly, Miz
Sabu's entrance took a while because he decided to grab a table from under the ring and set it up, before eventually stepping foot into the ring.
The Sandman engaged in his typical entrance of walking through the crowd after smashing a beer into his skull. So it is no surprise that he had the longest entrance of the match.
These numbers add up to about 6m 58s of total entrance time out of the entire 56m 20s match. That means that for about 12.4% of the match, at least one superstar was in midst of his entrance.
Time Between Buzzers
WWE 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 - Dykstra
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 2 - Matt Hardy
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 3 - Edge
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 4 - Dreamer
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 5 - Sabu
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 6 - Helms
- 1m 31s: Buzzer 7 - Benjamin
- 1m 32s: Buzzer 8 - Kane
- 1m 52s: Buzzer 9 - Punk
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 10 - King Booker
- 1m 31s: Buzzer 11 - Super Crazy
- 1m 20s: Buzzer 12 - Jeff Hardy
- 1m 31s: Buzzer 13 - Sandman
- 1m 32s: Buzzer 14 - Orton
- 1m 39s: Buzzer 15 - Benoit
- 1m 34s: Buzzer 16 - RVD
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 17 - Viscera
- 1m 32s: Buzzer 18 - Nitro
- 1m 20s: Buzzer 19 - Thorn
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 20 - Holly
- 1m 32s: Buzzer 21 - HBK
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 22 - Masters
- 1m 32s: Buzzer 23 - Chavo
- 1m 31s: Buzzer 24 - MVP
- 1m 30s: Buzzer 25 - Carlito
- 1m 31s: Buzzer 26 - Khali
- 1m 24s: Buzzer 27 - Miz
- 1m 39s: Buzzer 28 - Undertaker
WWE really nailed the timing of the waiting periods on this Royal Rumble match. 22 of the 28 waiting times landed within 5 seconds of the 90-second goal. And what's even more impressive is that 21 of the 28 waiting times landed within 2 seconds of the 90-second goal. 16 of the 28 waiting times landed within one second of the 90-second goal. It doesn't get much better than this.
My guess is that the time on the Undertaker's buzzer was slightly delayed because The Great Khali was still finishing up his 7 consecutive eliminations. This was done to set up The Undertaker as the only man that could stop the impossible threat of Khali, so Khali needed to get all of his eliminations out of the way prior to The Undertaker's entrance.
In a perfectly timed match, the final buzzer (signaling Undertaker's entrance) would have gone off 42m 00s after the start of the match. In reality, this buzzer went off at 42m 34s.
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 58m 10s. Given that the match lasted a total of 56m 20s, that comes out to an average of 6.4 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 table shows the total time that the ring was filled with an exact number of discrete superstars at once:
Active Wrestlers | Total Time | Percentage of Match Time | Cumulative Percentage |
2 | 9m 17s | 16.5 | 16.5 |
3 | 1m 54s | 3.4 | 19.9 |
4 | 7m 43s | 13.7 | 33.6 |
5 | 4m 14s | 7.5 | 41.1 |
6 | 3m 04s | 5.4 | 46.5 |
7 | 6m 56s | 12.3 | 58.8 |
8 | 5m 42s | 10.1 | 68.9 |
9 | 9m 15s | 16.4 | 85.4 |
10 | 5m 05s | 9.0 | 94.4 |
11 | 2m 45s | 4.9 | 99.3 |
12 | 0m 25s | 0.7 | 100.0 |
There's a lot going on here. First of all, the average number of 6.4 competitors in the ring at any given second is a high mark independent of any context. But it stands out even more when you consider that the ring was filled with only 4 or fewer men for 33.6% of the total match time. The middle of the match was simply jam packed with superstars. Between the time stamps of 10m 40s until 41m 31s, the average number of superstars in the ring at any given point was 8.7!
There were two spots in the match that were specifically designed with a crowded ring in mind. There was a major point very late in the match where The Great Khali eliminated 7 men in the span 0m 44 seconds, so the ring needed to be filled up with this many superstars for him to pull off the feat. There was also a spot earlier in the match where 7 or 8 men teamed up to throw Viscera out of the ring, so it was necessary to have a crowded ring for that moment as well.
The iron man of the match, Edge, was always present in the ring at any point when there were 5 or more superstars in the ring.
The 30 men in the 2007 Royal Rumble match had a greater cumulative survival time than the 40 men in the 2011 Royal Rumble match. This is even more impressive for the 2007 participants when you consider that the 2011 Royal Rumble match lasted 13m 32s longer than the 2007 Royal Rumble match.
End of the Match
Once the final entrant (Undertaker) entered the ring, the match essentially turned into a 6-man Battle Royal to the finish between Edge, Orton, HBK, MVP, Khali, and Undertaker. This final segment of the Royal Rumble match lasted 13m 16s, and at that point Undertaker emerged as the winner of the match. 7m 34s of this time was devoted to the final one-on-one battle between Undertaker and HBK.
That's all you need to know about the timing of the 2007 Royal Rumble match. Which numbers do you find to be the most interesting?