Last Updated on: 2nd May 2026, 10:54 am
I haven’t seen WrestleMania yet, and I’ve been doing my best to avoid wrestling news so that there might still be some surprises for me by the time I do. But one thing that won’t be a surprise? There were a lot of damn commercials and generally wasted time. Oh, and a bunch of the matches went short so that they could fit it all in.
The shortened matches bit is a new wrinkle, but I’ve been beating that drum for years, as you likely know if you’ve been here before or have talked wrestling with me elsewhere. WWE routinely does four hour shows that could have been done in under three, and three hour shows that might need an hour and a half, tops. And it’s only gotten worse since the company was sold a few years ago. It’s not unusual now to watch a show and literally be able to skip ahead fifteen minutes or more from the time the last important thing happened to when the next one begins. Everything is a plug now. Part of that is just how business works, but eventually it does get to the point of ridiculousness. For me, that point was reached long ago, but it seems like this weekend is when the rest of the world finally caught up.
Without even trying yesterday, I smacked into not one, but two pretty mainstream articles about it. That’s bad. Or at least it would be bad if the ghouls at TKO cared at all about anything other than money and Donald Trump.
For an event named WrestleMania, there wasn’t all that much wrestling taking place.
Fans of professional wrestling are furious with WWE after the two-night show – billed as their biggest annual showcase event of the year – featured nearly as much commercials as it did in-ring action.
According to several tallies online, Saturday’s Night 1 featured roughly 86 minutes of wrestling while Night 2 on Sunday had just 82 minutes – though the second night’s total broadcast length was shorter.
However, during Night 1, there was approximately 74 minutes spent broadcasting commercials.Here's a stat that's about to blow your mind.
In Ring Wrestling Time: 1 hour, 26 minutes total across 7 matches
Ad time: APPROXIMATELY 1 hour and 14 minutes.
12 LESS MINUTES OF ADS THAN WRESTLING.
TKO are genuinely ruining EVERYTHING.#WrestleMania pic.twitter.com/lqqH98TQX7
— 𝙎𝙖𝙢 (@RhodesKotaEra) April 19, 2026
I’ll offer the same advice I always do. Unless it’s your job, you don’t have to watch any of this live. No one is forcing you to sit through all that crap. This isn’t the old days. I’m probably going to watch both nights of Mania in the time it took you to watch one, and while I’ll be annoyed by imagining myself being you, I’ll for sure be much happier knowing that I’m not.