Every match on AEW pay-per-view gets enough time to be good

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When I was recently going through the data on the match times at All Elite Wrestling’s Full Gear pay-per-view, there was one consistent characteristic that really stuck out to me: just about every single main card match goes at least ten minutes in length.

Here is the sorted list of match times for all 44 main card PPV matches thus far in AEW history, including last year’s AEW-adjacent event, All In.

38m 46s: Kenny Omega vs. Jon Moxley (Full Gear)
31m 27s: Cody & Dustin Rhodes vs. Young Bucks (Fight for the Fallen)
29m 38s: Chris Jericho vs. Cody (Full Gear)
26m 35s: Kenny Omega vs. Chris Jericho (Double or Nothing)
26m 16s: Chris Jericho vs. Hangman Page (All Out)
26m 06s: Kazuchika Okada vs. Marty Scurll (All In)
24m 57s: The Young Bucks vs. Lucha Bros (Double or Nothing)
24m 10s: The Young Bucks vs. Lucha Bros (All Out)
23m 40s: Kenny Omega vs. PAC (All Out)
22m 34s: Kenny Omega vs. CIMA (Fight for the Fallen)
22m 27s: Dustin Rhodes vs. Cody (Double or Nothing)
22m 02s: Nick Aldis vs. Cody (All In)
21m 00s: The Young Bucks vs. Proud -N- Powerful (Full Gear)
20m 29s: Omega & Young Bucks vs. Lucha Bros & Laredo Kid (Fyter Fest)
20m 10s: Joey Janela vs. Adam Page (All In)
20m 03s: Cody Rhodes vs. Darby Allin (Fyter Fest)
20m 01s: Jon Moxley vs. Joey Janela (Fyter Fest)
19m 06s: Adam Page vs. Kip Sabian (Fight for the Fallen)
18m 52s: Hangman Page vs. PAC (Full Gear)
17m 47s: Kenny Omega vs. Pentagon Jr. (All In)
17m 24s: Cody Rhodes vs. Shawn Spears (All Out)
15m 08s: Jurassic Express vs. Angelico & Evans vs. Dark Order (Fight for the Fallen)
15m 05s: Lucha Bros vs. SCU (Fight for the Fallen)
14m 57s: Jimmy Havoc vs. Darby Allin vs. Joey Janela (All Out)
14m 24s: Jay Lethal vs. Flip Gordon (All In)
13m 46s: SCU vs. Strong Hearts (Double or Nothing)
13m 46s: The Dark Order vs. Best Friends (All Out)
13m 23s: Hikaru Shida vs. Riho (All Out)
13m 18s: Riho vs. Emi Sakura (Full Gear)
13m 14s: Havoc, Janela, Allin vs. MJF, Spears, Guevara (Fight for the Fallen)
13m 02s: Riho vs. Rose vs. Sakazaki (Fyter Fest)
13m 02s: SCU vs. Private Party vs. Lucha Bros (Full Gear)
13m 00s: Shida, Riho, Mizunami vs. Kong, Sakazaki, Sakura (Double or Nothing)
12m 43s: Blanchard vs. Green vs. Baker vs. Rayne (All In)
12m 42s: The Best Friends vs. Angelico & Evans (Double or Nothing)
11m 44s: Christopher Daniels vs. Stephen Amell (All In)
11m 43s: Golden Elite vs. Rey, Fenix, Bandido (All In)
11m 43s: Joey Janela vs. Shawn Spears (Full Gear)
11m 42s: SCU vs. Luchasaurus, Jungle Boy & Marko Stunt (All Out)
11m 07s: Rae vs. Baker vs. Rose vs. Kong (Double or Nothing)
10m 50s: Page vs. MJF vs. Havoc vs. Jungle Boy (Fyter Fest)
10m 17s: Allie vs. Brandi Rhodes (Fight for the Fallen)
10m 07s: Matt Cross vs. MJF (All In)
9m 42s: CIMA vs. Christopher Daniels (Fyter Fest)

The only match that failed to reach 10 minutes is the final entry on the list, CIMA versus Daniels from Fyter Fest. 43 out of the 44 total matches (97.7%) went at least 10 minutes.

For comparison’s sake, I have timed all 721 WWE PPV matches since the start of 2013, and 471 of those matches (65.3%) have reached the 10 minute mark or beyond.

Of course, there isn’t some hard rule about 10 minutes being the invisible boundary between a short match and a long match, nor is 10 minutes a requirement for a match to be good. It’s just a nice round number that is easy to work with. There are many matches in the history of pro wrestling under 10 minutes that are quite good.

However I have watched enough relatively short matches to know that it’s much harder for a match to be good when it doesn’t get a lot of time. Sometimes there just isn’t a lot the wrestlers can do to overcome lackluster previous booking leading to a match that has an eight minute window to work with.

When I look at this list of AEW PPV match times, the main thing that stands out to me is that every match gets enough time to have a chance to deliver an entertaining bout. The other thing that stands out to me is that Chris Jericho and Cody really don’t need to be working 25+ minute matches. But that’s a conversation for another day.

What do you think of the match quality and time allocation on AEW PPV so far, Cagesiders?

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