Background

For years, I’ve harnessed the “Observer Star Ratings” blog to look at Star Accumulations by Star or Who has the Brightest Future (Age vs Star Ratings). While I had the information of who was in the matches, I lacked other important data points such as length of the match, type of show or finish of match.

Through sheer will of force and extensively cross-referencing with The History of WWE I’ve mapped each of the matches to collect these data points.

I’ve been interested in whether or not it’s possible to qualify the qualities of what distinguishes a good *** match from a great **** match. By examining the dataset in full, can we draw any conclusions about which factors seem to influence how Dave Meltzer rated the matches?

Initial Findings

The first thing that immediately jumps out is the relationship between star ratings and average match length.

Expressed graphically, the trend is even clearer:

It’s important to pause here and note some things:

Long does not necessarily equal good. The initial dataset was composed only of matches that were rated three stars or higher. Any findings here only apply to comparing similarly situated (three stars or higher) WWE matches. That is to say, there are plenty of long WWE matches which were not rated even three stars. Simply being long doesn’t equate with being good. However, among good matches, there is certainly a relationship between being longer (or at least of a certain length) and being rated highly.