WWE Royal Rumble 2010 Match Time and Statistics

By Cain A. Knight Jan 22, 2017, 2:00pm EST

The 2010 Royal Rumble match lasted 49 minutes and 23 seconds (49m 23s). This match featured CM Punk delivering straight-edge sermons, Beth Phoenix eliminating the Great Khali, and a surprise return of the Rated R Superstar.

This text graphic captures much of the information discussed below. It gives time stamps for each superstar's arrival and exit from the match, as well as showing who the longest lasting superstars were as the match progressed.

For comparison's sake, here are other versions of this graphic for Royal Rumble matches from 1988, 1992, 2003, 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 2010 Royal Rumble match was 5m 46s and the median survival time was 2m 41s.

Here is the full list of survival times for all 30 superstars:

22m 11s: John Cena
20m 45s: Shawn Michaels
17m 52s: Triple H
14m 43s: Drew McIntyre
12m 39s: Ted DiBiase Jr.
11m 36s: John Morrison
10m 04s: CM Punk
8m 01s: Kane
7m 55s: Cody Rhodes
7m 19s: Edge
5m 24s: Batista
4m 34s: Carlito
4m 09s: R-Truth
4m 05s: Big Show
2m 52s: Kofi Kingston
2m 30s: Dolph Ziggler
2m 27s: Evan Bourne
2m 25s: Mark Henry
2m 24s: Chris Jericho
2m 07s: Jack Swagger
1m 39s: Great Khali
1m 38s: Beth Phoenix
0m 49s: Shelton Benjamin
0m 32s: Zack Ryder
0m 30s: Chris Masters
0m 29s: Yoshi Tatsu
0m 25s: JTG
0m 21s: Matt Hardy
0m 17s: The Miz
0m 07s: MVP

The overall time for the 2010 Royal Rumble match of 49m 23s is the shortest ever for a 30-man Rumble match that used at least 90-second waiting intervals (the 1995 match is shorter but used 60-second waiting intervals, and the 1988 match was shorter but only had 20 competitors).

John Cena’s survival time of 22m 11s is the shortest ever for the Iron Man of a Royal Rumble match.

The average and median survival times provided above are also the shortest in the history of the Royal Rumble match.

8 participants lasted under one minute, and 19 participants lasted under five minutes.

The first 2 entrants in the match, Dolph Ziggler and Evan Bourne, were both eliminated by 2m 30s into the match. This is the earliest point in any Royal Rumble match where the first two entrants were both officially eliminated. It should be noted that both Steve Austin and Vince McMahon had left the ring by 2m 26s into the 1999 Royal Rumble match, however neither man was officially eliminated at that point.

Beth Phoenix’s survival time of 1m 38s appears to be the longest ever for a female participant in Royal Rumble history. Chyna lasted 0m 35s in 1999, Chyna lasted 0m 38s in 2000, and Kharma lasted 1m 01s in 2012.

CM Punk spent a total of 4m 12s of his survival time as the only active participant in the match, though 0m 56s of this time was spent waiting for Triple H to get into the ring.

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 (Ziggler, Bourne) are excluded because their entrances took place prior to the start of the match.

3m 22s: MVP
0m 56s: Triple H
0m 38s: Drew McIntyre
0m 31s: Great Khali
0m 27s: John Cena
0m 22s: Kane
0m 21s: Mark Henry
0m 20s: Edge
0m 17s: Zack Ryder
0m 16s: Cody Rhodes
0m 14s: HBK, Punk
0m 13s: DiBiase, Big Show, Kofi
0m 12s: The Miz
0m 11s: Morrison, Batista, Carlito, Y2J, Masters
0m 10s: JTG
0m 09s: Truth, Swagger, Benjamin
0m 08s: Beth, Yoshi, Matt Hardy

MVP was attacked by the Miz during his entrance and so he didn’t make it into the ring until 3m 22s after his buzzer went off.

Triple H’s entrance had no special circumstances to explain its length; it was just a typically slow Triple H entrance as CM Punk awaited him in the ring. Drew McIntyre took his sweet time walking down the entrance ramp as well.

These numbers add up to about 10m 22s of total entrance time out of the entire 49m 23s match. That means that for about 21.0% of the match, at least one superstar was in the midst of his entrance. However if MVP’s entrance time was magically reduced to 0m 10s, which is how much time passed before Miz attacked him, then this percentage would drop to 15.3%.

Follow The 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 51s: Buzzer 1 - CM Punk
1m 36s: Buzzer 2 - JTG
1m 27s: Buzzer 3 - Great Khali
1m 27s: Buzzer 4 - Beth Phoenix
1m 32s: Buzzer 5 - Zack Ryder
1m 32s: Buzzer 6 - Triple H
1m 44s: Buzzer 7 - Drew McIntyre
1m 31s: Buzzer 8 - Ted DiBiase Jr.
1m 31s: Buzzer 9 - John Morrison
1m 32s: Buzzer 10 - Kane
1m 33s: Buzzer 11 - Cody Rhodes
1m 45s: Buzzer 12 - MVP
1m 29s: Buzzer 13 - Carlito
1m 31s: Buzzer 14 - The Miz
1m 32s: Buzzer 15 - Matt Hardy
1m 25s: Buzzer 16 - Shawn Michaels
1m 47s: Buzzer 17 - John Cena
1m 33s: Buzzer 18 - Shelton Benjamin
1m 31s: Buzzer 19 - Yoshi Tatsu
1m 31s: Buzzer 20 - Big Show
1m 31s: Buzzer 21 - Mark Henry
1m 19s: Buzzer 22 - Chris Masters
1m 14s: Buzzer 23 - R-Truth
1m 20s: Buzzer 24 - Jack Swagger
1m 32s: Buzzer 25 - Kofi Kingston
1m 30s: Buzzer 26 - Chris Jericho
1m 58s: Buzzer 27 - Edge
1m 26s: Buzzer 28 - Batista

19 of the 28 waiting periods fell within 5 seconds of the 90-second goal.

The average waiting period was 1m 33s and the median time was 1m 31s.

In a perfectly timed match, the final buzzer (signaling Batista's entrance) would have gone off 42m 00s after the start of the match. In reality, this buzzer went off at 43m 10s.

The three consecutive waiting periods that began when Buzzer 21 sounded (signaling Mark Henry) and concluded when Buzzer 24 sounded (signaling Jack Swagger) were the three shortest waiting periods of the night, with each ranging between 1m 14s and 1m 20s.

At one point during this time, Mark Henry and Big Show positioned themselves against the ropes in such a way that they could be tossed out together, and that’s when R-Truth entered the match and eliminated both of them. Perhaps WWE decided to just send R-Truth out there rather than wait the additional 15 seconds of Big Show and Mark Henry being awkwardly pressed up against the ropes with nothing else happening in the ring.

The fact that all three of these shortest waiting periods came relatively late in the match could be an indication that WWE was rushing to the end of the match, but it’s not like these three shortest waiting periods shaved even a minute off the clock, so it could be unrelated.

Four other waiting periods lasted between 1m 25s and 1m 27s, with two of these periods occurring during Punk’s early match interactions with JTG and the Great Khali.

The longest waiting period lasted 1m 58s. During this time, Chris Jericho entered the match and eventually got the better of everyone in the ring. This positioned him as the only man standing on his feet at the time when the period concluded with the buzzer for Edge (Edge was making a surprise return and seeking revenge on his former tag partner Jericho).

The next longest waiting period lasted 1m 51s, and this was the very first waiting period of the match. The only explanation I can come up with for this one is that they were waiting for Evan Bourne to hit his finisher (Air Bourne) on Ziggler, which he did as the official WWE clock ticked down from 10.

The third longest waiting period lasted 1m 47s. Shawn Michaels entered the ring and teamed up with Triple H to clear the ring, eliminating 5 men. This was done because the ring needed to be cleared of jabronis for the dramatic entrance of John Cena that followed, setting up HBK versus Triple H versus Cena.

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 2h 52m 49s. Given that the match lasted a total of 49m 23s, that comes out to an average of 3.5 competitors in the ring at any given second.

Here is a more accurate way to understand how many men were in the ring at any given time. This chart shows the total time that the ring was filled with an exact number of discrete superstars at once.

2010 Royal Rumble Ring Crowdedness

Active Wrestlers	Total Time	% of Match Time	Cumulative %
Active Wrestlers	Total Time	% of Match Time	Cumulative %
1	4m 12s	8.5	8.5
2	10m 44s	21.7	30.2
3	13m 19s	27.0	57.2
4	10m 36s	21.5	78.7
5	2m 37s	5.3	84.0
6	4m 27s	9.0	93.0
7	2m 50s	5.7	98.7
8	0m 31s	1.0	99.8
9	0m 07s	0.2	100.0

The average of 3.5 competitors in the ring at any given second is the 2nd lowest ever for a Royal Rumble match, only beating out the 2002 edition. The ring contained 4 or fewer superstars for 78.8% of the match.

CM Punk’s early dominance kept the ring depth very low; the ring did not reach a depth of 4 superstars until 14m 22s into the match, when Punk was already eliminated.

Starting at the point when Triple H entered (at 10m 21s) to have a one-on-one battle with Punk, the ring averaged 4.1 superstars at any given second for the remainder of the match.

Right after CM Punk was wiped out by Triple H, there was no other elimination for the next 10m 21s of the match, between 12m 09s and 22m 30s. The ring reached its max depth of 9 superstars during this time span.

Once HBK entered the ring at 25m 12s, 5 superstars were eliminated in a single waiting period. This lowered the ring depth to just 2 men, HBK and Triple H. Starting at the point when John Cena next entered the match, then ring averaged 3.4 superstars at any given second for the remainder of the match.

Things never really got crowded again once HBK wiped everyone out, with the ring only reaching a max depth of 5 superstars from that point on.

End of the Match

Once Batista entered the ring, the match essentially turned into a 4-man Battle Royal to the finish between HBK, Cena, Edge, and Batista. This is the smallest number of active competitors ever for this final portion of a Royal Rumble match.

This final segment of the 2010 Royal Rumble match lasted 6m 02s, and at that point Edge emerged as the winner of the match.

That's all you need to know about the timing of the 2010 Royal Rumble match. Which numbers do you find to be the most interesting?

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