How much wrestling actually happened at Elimination Chamber 2021?

WWE featured six total matches on the main card of Elimination Chamber 2021 (Sun., Feb. 21).

The main card of this pay-per-view (PPV) lasted 2 hours, 29 minutes, and 58 seconds (2h 29m 58s). Here is a sorted list of the bell-to-bell times for the six matches that took place during this event:

• 34m 09s: SmackDown Elimination Chamber
• 31m 21s: Raw Elimination Chamber
• 9m 37s: Jax & Baszler vs. Banks & Belair
• 8m 39s: Lashley vs. Riddle vs. Morrison
• 1m 32s: Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan
• 0m 28s: Drew McIntyre vs. The Miz

These times add up to 1h 25m 46s, which is roughly 57.2% of the show. For comparison’s sake, the overall match time percentage for all WWE PPVs since the start of 2013 is 54.2%.

Elimination Chamber 2021 was the second shortest WWE pay-per-view event since the start of 2013, out of 113 total events. Clocking in at 2h 29m 58s, it was much shorter than your typical episode of Raw.

Here are WWE’s ten shortest pay-per-view events during that time:

• 2h 23m 46s: Money in the Bank 2020
• 2h 29m 58s: Elimination Chamber 2021
• 2h 31m 53s: Payback 2020
• 2h 33m 45s: Extreme Rules 2020
• 2h 37m 40s: No Mercy 2016
• 2h 37m 52s: Backlash 2016
• 2h 43m 06s: Royal Rumble 2015
• 2h 43m 07s: TLC 2016
• 2h 43m 34s: Survivor Series 2013
• 2h 44m 00s: Royal Rumble 2014

The four shortest pay-per-views since the start of 2013 have all occurred during the coronavirus pandemic. It will be interesting to see if WWE keeps up this trend once things return closer to normal, or if they immediately go back to marathon length events.

It’s likely that WWE originally intended for this event to run a little longer than 2.5 hours, but Asuka’s match with Lacey Evans was canceled and never replaced.

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