10 Best WWE Matches Under 5 Minutes

It's almost wrestling law that a match can't truly be considered great unless it goes at least 25 minutes.

From Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat to Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada (the latter of whom went a full hour in the second of their trilogy earlier this year), nearly every classic is notable for its epic length, without which there simply wouldn't have been time to fit in all the jaw-dropping spots.

But, while it's fine for high-flyers and agile athlete-types to go the distance, not all of us are wired that way. Some of the bulkier (read: slower) wrestlers just don't have the engine to last more than 10 minutes (and, even if they did, nobody would want to see it anyway).

Others see their minutes in the ring cut by production constraints, or a pair of their colleagues over-running (or, worse still, WWE's perplexing need to see that every pay-per-view has a couple of comedy skits backstage)

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Whatever the case, short matches are here to stay. But the good news they can actually be good - great even - and there have been several examples from WWE's recent past to illustrate that.

Tazz's in-ring WWE career could have gone better, really, when you consider that he was sitting behind the commentary desk (alongside Michael Cole, no less) just a couple of years after signing on the dotted line.

If we remember one thing about Tazz the wrestler (his highly successful run in Paul Heyman's ECW excepted, obviously), it was his debut match with Kurt Angle at the Royal Rumble in 2000.

This was a bout noted for its closing sequence and correspondent crowd reaction apart from anything else. Tazz, welcomed by a hero's ovation from the Madison Square Garden fans, hit a series of brutal-looking suplexes on the Olympic Gold Medalist before forcing his much-fancied opponent to tap out in just three minuts.

A star was born, sort of.