Royal Rumble 2017 is about to begin. (WWE.com)
This year’s Royal Rumble pay-per-view is just getting started with its pre-show on the WWE Network. How long will the pay-per-view last, exactly? When does it end?
The Royal Rumble show itself will be four hours long, beginning at 7:00 p.m. and concluding at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time. There’s also two hours of pre-show content; this begins at 5:00 p.m. and concludes at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
This may come as a relief to fans who thought they might see something similar to WrestleMania 32 take place tonight; that pay-per-view was famously nearly seven hours long. There was a two hour pre-show that night, and then the WrestleMania event itself lasted 4 hours and 51 minutes. This made it the longest WrestleMania in history, and it left fans complaining that the show was far too bloated and could have been cut down by, for example, not having The Rock come out brandishing a flamethrower for no reason.
There was also some confusion about the Royal Rumble’s length on Sunday when Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer tweeted that the show was going to be close to five hours long. That would put it right up there with WrestleMania 32, which surprised a lot of people considering this is not as significant a pay-per-view as WrestleMania. Thankfully, Meltzer later clarified that he was including the pre-show matches in his “five hours” statement.
It might sound silly to hear fans breathing a sigh of relief that they will be receiving less content than they thought, but the reaction to Meltzer’s clarification was almost universally positive, as it seems everyone, especially those who live in different time zones, was dreading the possibility of another seven hour WWE program.
There was also a fair bit of controversy with WrestleMania 32 because some viewers who bought the pay-per-view through cable got cut off at exactly 11:00, therefore missing the final 50 minutes. For that reason, let’s hope Royal Rumble is able to wrap up as close to 11 as possible.
Although the main Royal Rumble event is four hours long, it really might as well be five, as the pre-show matches aren’t exactly filler content; Sasha Banks vs. Nia Jax, Cesaro and Sheamus vs. Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson, and Becky Lynch, Nikki Bella, and Naomi vs. Alexa Bliss, Mickie James, and Natalya will all take place during the pre-show.