WWE stated there would be 90-second waiting intervals between each entrant in the 2026 men’s Royal Rumble match. How well did WWE stick to that claim?
Here are the waiting times between all 28 buzzers, in chronological order. 21 wrestlers were eliminated before the buzzer for the final entrant, and I will make note of their eliminations in parentheses.
WWE’s ring announcer Mark Nash said the waiting periods were supposed to last 90 seconds, but the graphic that appeared on the screen as he spoke said the intervals are two minutes. For the purposes of this post I’m going with 90 seconds as the goal because that’s what the ring announcer said, and it mostly seems to fit the data better.
The average waiting period in this Royal Rumble match was 1m 47s, and the median time was 1m 37s.
10 of the 28 waiting periods fell within five seconds of the 90-second goal.
16 of the 28 waiting periods fell within 10 seconds of the 90-second goal.
In a perfectly timed match, the final buzzer (signaling GUNTHER’s entrance) would have gone off 42m 00s after the start of the match. In reality, this buzzer went off at 49m 46s.
The median entrance time for a wrestler (how much time lapses between the buzzer going off and when that star enters the ring) in the 2026 men’s Royal Rumble match was 0m 33s, which for a theoretical 90-second period means there is less than one minute left for that wrestler to get his shit in before the next buzzer goes off. In reality, most of the waiting periods lasted longer than 90 seconds.
8 of the 28 waiting periods lasted 2m 00s or longer. Here is some context behind those intervals, in chronological order. 11 of the 21 eliminations occurred during these longer intervals.
On the other side of the coin, the shortest waiting period lasted 1m 24s, and this is where The Miz entered the Royal Rumble. His entrance time of 0m 22s was well below the median. Everyone in the ring teamed up to attack Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi. The two big men fought them all off (including Ilja Dragunov getting eliminated) and then stared each other down as the countdown clock appeared on the screen.
There was also stretch in the middle of the match where five consecutive waiting periods all lasted between 1m 27s and 1m 33s. This included the entrances of Austin Theory, Bronson Reed, Ilja Dragunov, La Parka, and Dragon Lee. WWE was loading up the ring with bodies and no eliminations during this tightly timed stretch.
So there you have it, Cagesiders. Which of the above numbers surprise you the most?
Previous Royal Rumble analyses:
