‘I Was Bummed’ – WWE Champion Opens Up On First Singles Match In Eight Years Lasting Three Minutes

WWE

A current WWE champion has opened up on their first singles match in eight years lasting only three minutes.

On last week’s WWE SmackDown show, Brie Bella took part in her first singles match since her return to the company back at the Royal Rumble, when she was defeated by Lainey Reid of Fatal Influence.

The match would only last three minutes, which was partly due to SmackDown now returning to two hours for the rest of the year after being three hours since January.

Brie Bella ‘Bummed’ Following Three Minute Singles Match

Speaking on the Nikki & Brie Show, Brie opened up on the match only lasting three minutes, saying that she was ‘bummed’, and joked that they decided to cut time from her match due to her being part of the Divas era.

She said:

“I’ve been pitching a while to have a singles match, I’ve been wanting it forever. So when I was like, finally I got a singles match, I was super excited.

“When I heard the times I was bummed, but also I understand SmackDown is back to two hours, it’ll be two hours until January, so all of a sudden you have all these storylines and it’s a three hour show and then you get cut down to two hours, your back to fighting for TV time and they’re gonna condense some stuff.

“So a part of me understood it. I won’t lie, I was bummed. This is how I look at it; they try and get a bunch of stuff in, and obviously I’m grateful to be on the card. Did I make jokes when I went back, Paige and I were like ‘how did I lose my time’?

“Obviously I’m gonna make jokes, ‘if there’s anyone we can give three minutes to, it’s Brie Bella, because she’s from the Diva era!’ And I did. And I did a lot with the three minutes.

“Paige was honest like ‘are you bummed?’ I’m not gonna lie, I’m not here to stroke anyone and make anyone feel good about themselves, I was bummed, but I think I left the fans wanting more. I’ll admit, even when I heard my time before I got to the building I was pissed, then I was like ‘you know what Brie, look at what I get to do for a living'”

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Pros & Cons Of Two Hour SmackDown

With SmackDown now officially two hours once again until the end of 2026, there are both pros and cons to reducing the run time of the show.

As previously mentioned, the biggest con of the show losing an hour is that a lot of the content on the show will be condensed, such as Brie Bella’s three minute match with Lainey Reid, as well as Rey Fenix vs. Hijo del Vikingo, which only ran for 8 minutes.

Matches on SmackDown have typically gone almost too long in recent months due to the need to fill out three hours of television time, so the drastic change will take a lot of getting used to.

On the other side, SmackDown has largely been a boring, uninteresting show for most of 2026, so the change to two hours will make the show much easier to stomach compared to a three hour show.

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