How much wrestling actually happened at Revolution 2021?

AEW featured eight total matches on the main card of Revolution 2021 (Sun., Mar. 7) in Jacksonville, Florida.

The main card of this pay-per-view (PPV) lasted 3 hours, 42 minutes, and 33 seconds (3h 42m 33s). Here is a sorted list of the bell-to-bell times for the eight matches that took place during this event:

• 26m 48s: Casino Tag Team Royale
• 25m 09s: Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley
• 23m 17s: “Face of the Revolution” Ladder Match
• 17m 49s: Young Bucks vs. MJF & Chris Jericho
• 15m 10s: Hikaru Shida vs. Ryo Mizunami
• 14m 59s: Hangman Page vs. Matt Hardy
• 13m 52s: Sting & Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage & Ricky Starks
• 7m 53s: Orange Cassidy & Chuck Taylor vs. Miro & Kip Sabian

These times add up to 2h 24m 57s, which is roughly 65.1% of the show. The overall match time percentage for all AEW PPVs is now 62.1% For comparison’s sake, the overall match time percentage for all WWE PPVs since the start of 2013 is 54.2%.

Like usual, AEW’s pay-per-view card was filled with lengthy matches up and down the card. Miro’s tag team match is the only one that did not reach 13+ minutes in length.

The Casino Tag Team Royale was the longest match of the night. On the one hand that might not be surprising since it was designed to be roughly 50% of a Royal Rumble match, with 15 teams and staggered entries. On the other hand, many of those 15 entries consisted of lower card acts, so it was far from a given that the match would go longer than, say, the Exploding Barbed Wire main event for the AEW world championship.

Speaking of the main event, the primary thing most fans will remember about this card was the dud ending, where Eddie Kingston tried to save Jon Moxley from a bomb that was going to blow up the ring. The bomb turned out to be a dud, and it’s a botch that is getting comparisons to all-time pro wrestling fails like the debut of The Shockmaster.

That being said, there’s at least one thing about the final explosion that went according to plan. AEW said that the bomb would detonate at 30 minutes after the beginning of the main event match. It did indeed go off at that point, even though the explosion primarily consisted of some pathetic sparkler action.

The main event’s match time of 25m 09s indicates that Kenny Omega and the Good Brothers had to kill a few minutes in the ring while setting Moxley up for that weak explosion. It seemed to be a bit of an awkwardly long wait while it was happening, but AEW adhered to the clock.

Here are the match time percentages for the previous AEW events, in chronological order:

• 54.8%: Double or Nothing 2019
• 60.2%: Fyter Fest 2019
• 58.8%: Fight for the Fallen 2019
• 62.4%: All Out 2019
• 66.5%: Full Gear 2019
• 57.8%: Revolution 2020
• 65.0%: Double or Nothing 2020
• 65.7%: All Out 2020
• 63.6%: Full Gear 2020

Counting Revolution 2021, the last four AEW PPV cards have all finished with between 63.5% and 66.0% total match time, and a run time between 3h 40m 00s and 3h 50m 00s.

Are you surprised by any of these results, Cagesiders? Which of these matches received less (or more) time than you hoped for?