WWF RAW 01 JAN 2001 — Two Minutes for the Only Title Defended

The only championship defended on this show was on the line for 2:27 — the shortest match of the night, and 1:56 less than the show’s average segment. Around it, 1:01:22 of a 1:36:52 broadcast was not a match. What happened is in the results post; this one is about where the time went.

The Split: Just Over a Third Wrestling

Eight matches and fourteen segments filled 1:36:52, a ratio of 1.8 segments for every match. The wrestling accounted for 0:35:30, or 36.6% of the broadcast; the remaining 1:01:22 went to talking, arrivals, phone calls and announcements. Seven of the eight matches carry a recorded time, and those seven account for the whole 0:35:30 — the six-man tag against Right to Censor has no clocked duration in the source sheet.

The longest unbroken run of non-match material is four consecutive segments — the mustard exchange, the beer, the phone call with Trish Stratus and the Dudley Boyz interview — worth an estimated 17:32 at the derived average. That estimated run is longer than any match on the card by 8:23. The back half is where the wrestling concentrates: matches 6 and 7 run back to back with nothing between them, the only place on the show where that happens.

Match Lengths: Two of Seven Under Four Minutes

The Rock and Kane took 9:09, a quarter of all the wrestling on the show at 25.8%. Set that match aside and the remaining six timed matches average 4:24 apiece — within a second of the 4:23 derived average segment. The median timed match is 4:58, and two of the seven finished inside four minutes.

The shortest match on the card is the one with a championship attached to it: 2:27 for the Hardcore title, 6.9% of ring time. The closing match ran 5:25, fourth-longest of the seven timed and 3:44 shorter than the Rock and Kane match that preceded it two slots earlier.

Segment Ownership: Half the Hour Belonged to Austin

Half the non-match material on the show belongs to one thread. Seven of the fourteen segments advance Austin’s pursuit of a title shot through Stephanie McMahon and William Regal: the arrival, the backstage assignment, the mustard, the beer, the in-ring tray confrontation, Regal with Debra, and Regal revealing the guest referee. At the derived average that is an estimated 30:41 — within 4:49 of every bell-to-bell second on the card combined.

The championship picture takes three segments and an estimated 13:09: the Kurt Angle, Edge and Christian interview, the Dudley Boyz interview, and Angle fleeing with Edge and Christian. The world title is not defended in any of the eight matches, and the only championship match on the card belongs to none of these three groups.

The remaining four segments cover the phone call between Vince and Stephanie McMahon about Trish Stratus, the Test and Trish backstage exchange, the opening commentary and the XFL announcement. Two of those four carry no storyline at all, which puts an estimated 8:46 of the broadcast in items that exist to sell the network’s next product.

Finishes: Half of Them Settled by Someone Else

Four of the eight finishes turn on a third party, three end on a wrestler’s own finishing move, and one is decided by a table. There are no disqualifications, no submissions, no count-outs and no no-contests on the card — every match reaches a decision, and half of them reach it through someone who was not in the match.

The interference finishes are also the ones attached to the show’s championships and its main storyline: the Hardcore defence, the Benoit and Test match, and both No. 1 contender qualifiers that closed the broadcast. The 2:27 Hardcore match is the extreme case — the fall was scored on Crash Holly, who was not the billed opponent.

The Full Rundown (in order)

Method

• Match times bell to bell, cross-checked across 3 independent contemporaneous recaps. Runtime measured from the broadcast: 1:36:52.
• Individual segment durations were not clocked; every figure derived from segment length distributes the 1:01:22 of non-match time evenly across 14 segments (4:23 each) and is an estimate.
• Match 2, Billy Gunn and the Acolytes vs. Right to Censor, carries no time in the source sheet, so it is excluded from the mean, the median, the ring-time shares and the timeline. Including it at the mean of the other seven would put bell-to-bell time at 0:40:34, or 41.9% of the broadcast.
• Segment bucketing judgment: the Vince and Stephanie McMahon phone call about Trish Stratus is counted under “everything else”. Counted with the Austin and Regal thread instead, that group becomes 8 segments (57.1%, est. 35:04).
• Finish bucketing judgment: the Undertaker’s DDT is treated as a pinfall off a finisher though it was not his usual finish; Raven’s Hardcore fall on Crash Holly is treated as a pinfall off direct interference because the fall was scored on a third party; the tables match has no pinfall. Two of the three recaps record the Benoit and Test finish as a pinfall, one as a submission; the pinfall reading is used.
• The source sheet records only the Hardcore Championship as defended. Contemporaneous recaps describe Benoit and Test as an Intercontinental Championship defence; treating it as one would make the count 2.