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How long will each match be at SummerSlam?

SummerSlam 2018 poster
A 13 match card is a slog no matter how long each one is

Burnout is the biggest danger on Sunday night. It's an apt one for an event entitled "SummerSlam." WWE has the unfortunate habit of trying to elongate these events beyond what they need to be, by adding filler matches and making other ones unnecessarily long. The result is a tired audience by the time the show ends.

To make SummerSlam an enjoyable event that can compete with an always perfectly-timed NXT TakeOver the night before, it's imperative to give each match an appropriate amount of time. Let the filler matches and ones featuring weaker workers be short while the ones with the more capable workers can fill more time on the card. If you don't, you risk burning fans out long before a main event that's likely to get a hostile reception, to say the least.

Will that happen? WWE doesn't always do the logical thing. With that in mind, we can make some predictions about match length. Note that each match isn't necessarily in order. That will come in another post.


#1 Raw Tag Team Championship: The B-Team (c) vs. The Revival (~9 minutes)

Raw Tag Team Championship SummerSlam
"Comedy" for the pre-show.

In a normal tag team match, The Revival can be expected to put on a 20-minute clinic, even as badly as they've been damaged on the main roster. However, the self-proclaimed "tag team specialists" are currently facing a team of comedy jobbers that somehow fluked themselves into the titles.

With that gimmick hanging over it, the match will probably be an overbooked mess with attempts at comedy.

9 minutes is about all you need to do a match like that, and with it coming on the pre-show, where video segments, interviews, and chatter among commentators dominate a lot of the situation, even with two hours, this match need not go more than that.

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