Men’s WWE Royal Rumble Match Broke Significant Record

The men’s WWE Royal Rumble match set a record.

During the Men’s Royal Rumble match in Indianapolis, there were a lot of stats shown on screen about how many people were in the ring, how many people had been eliminated from the match, what the next entrant number was, and so on.

Those stats made this year’s Royal Rumble feel more like a sporting event that we watch on television with stats appearing on screen all the time.

John Cena and Jey Uso were the final two men in the Men’s Royal Rumble with most people expecting Cena to get the win in his last Rumble match. Instead, Jey avoided elimination on the apron and went back in the ring to shove Cena from the apron to the floor.

The star-filled Rumble match lasted 80:04, which not only made it the longest Rumble match ever but also the longest WWE match ever. Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer noted that it was longer than some other older WWE matches that have fictionalized match times.

“The men’s Rumble match, which lasted 80:04, is almost surely the longest match in company history. There was an August 22, 1964, match in Madison Square Garden with Bruno Sammartino defending the WWWF title against Waldo Von Erich that was listed as an 81:00 curfew draw, but they routinely exaggerated times of long matches in that era. It‘s extremely doubtful they went near that long (in those days the general rule was 60:00 matches went around 37:00 to 40:00 and the 75:00 Sammartino vs. Pedro Morales match at Shea Stadium was actually 65:05).”

It was added by Meltzer that WWE’s Greatest Royal Rumble match on April 27, 2018, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with 50 wrestlers in the match went a legit 77:20 and was likely the previous longest match.

Did WWE Women’s Royal Rumble Also Break A Record?

As for the women’s match, Meltzer noted that this year’s Rumble was one second shorter than the record.

The women’s Rumble, which went 71:21, was the second-longest women’s match in company history. It fell one second short of the 71:22 for the 2019 Rumble. Roxanne Perez (67:45), Liv Morgan (67:00) and Iyo Sky (66:45) all broke the company record of the longest time in a match set by Bayley when she was in 63:03 enroute to winning last year.

Even though John Cena didn’t win the Royal Rumble match, he was WWE’s top merchandise seller during the Rumble event, beating out Cody Rhodes.