Analysis of how crowded the ring was during the 2018 women’s Royal Rumble match

The 2018 women’s Royal Rumble match lasted 59 minutes and 00 seconds (59m 00s).

This text graphic provides 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.

If you add up each wrestler's survival time, it results in a total survival time of 5h 04m 10s. Given that the match lasted a total of 59m 00s, that comes out to an average of 5.2 competitors in the ring at any given second. That would make this the 21st most crowded Royal Rumble match ever out of all 32 matches.

These numbers have not been adjusted to account for ring absences of active superstars like Sasha Banks or Nia Jax. There seemed to be a ton of that going on in this match and it will be quite an ordeal to track it all, so it’s on my list of things to investigate at a later date. Therefore when I talk about how many superstars were “in the ring” I’m counting all active superstars, whether they are literally inside the ring or not.

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

This chart shows that the were 4 or fewer active women for 33.2% of the match, and 6 or fewer active women for 80.5% of the match.

The number of active superstars ranged between 4 and 6, inclusive, for 66.0% of the match.

The number of active superstars in the ring only surpassed 7 for a total time of 4m 32s (or 7.7%) in this match.

The ring reached its maximum depth of 9 superstars when the final entrant, Trish Stratus, entered the ring.

There was a 25m 38s stretch, between the time stamps of 27m 13s and 52m 51s, where the number of active superstars was at least equal to 5. This streak started when Carmella entered the ring and ended when Trish was eliminated, leaving the Rumble with its final four participants. During this time the average ring crowdedness was equal to 6.5 active superstars at any given second.

The longest time span without any eliminations was 5m 21s, between the time stamps of 44m 10s and 49m 31s, bound by the eliminations of Carmella and Mickie James. Three new competitors (Nikki, Brie, Trish) entered the match during this time.

Once Trish Stratus entered the ring, the match essentially turned into a 9-woman Battle Royal to the finish between Sasha, Natalya, Jax, Asuka, Mickie, Nikki, Brie, Bayley, and Trish.

This final segment of the 2018 women’s Royal Rumble match lasted 11m 29s, and at that point Asuka emerged as the winner of the match.