10 Wrestlers Who Spent The Most Time In The Ring At WWE WrestleMania

In modern wrestling, long is synonymous with excellence.

It is as if a great fear has swept throughout the industry and cloaked over everything: the booker's pen, the wrestler's mind, the perception of the fanbase: a match can only be great if it reaches some arbitrary minimum number which is, at the very least seemingly, 20 minutes.

A very long match can't possibly be awarded less than **** is the very weird thought process. The idea that graft is equivalent to quality prevails because it creates the illusion of something "epic," and even those who can't buy that can't knock the effort. It's a grinding road to respect.

Some are fantastic at going long, particularly when those workers - Kenny Omega in particular - are intelligent enough to use their advanced conditioning as one last super-dramatic story beat when it deserts them. Other wrestlers fill that time with tired tropes, losing the crowd or what amounts to one with middling pacing and excessive, redundant plunder.

WrestleMania is no different; in the modern era, exaggerated selling reaches with hand-staring melodrama for some hollow projection of greatness. Some workers are capable of true gravitas.

Others?

One of the most tenured WrestleMania performers ever, Kane is also one of the most tedious.

This is an almost difficult entry to write up because there's so little to actually analyse. Kane was solid. Perfunctory. He was a spectacular entrance and an unforgettable angle man.

And then the bell rang.

And when it did, sluggish and nondescript action invariably followed. Kane was very much an "if you've seen one, you've seen them all" singles worker, and that one was pretty regulation outside of that preposterously good SmackDown match with Albert that one time. Prolonged heat, side slam, rest holds, choking, throat punches, signatures, finishes, all executed in the "right" order at a fittingly funereal pace many have mistaken for "good" psychology. The largely tepid crowd reactions suggest otherwise.

The famous matches with the Undertaker were overlong and inconsequential to the grand return of the Dead Man return entrance respectively. He was elevated by Kurt Angle and Randy Orton in matches that overdelivered without blowing a single soul away. He worked several forgettable tags - true nothing matches - but he did show out, as most everybody did, by adding his own madcap brushstroke to the epic canvas that was WrestleMania X-Seven.

Kane was a loyal servant whose duties were boring - and not the last indictment of WWE's monopoly...