I assumed time counting in Exhibition Matches begins when the match starts(when the opening bell rings and you gain control of your fighter) and ends when the match does. By counting my run and the current record for the fighter this way I beat the record by 6 seconds.

But the current record counted their time from the end of character selection until the end of the match. By that metric my run is longer by 25 seconds. Even though this was after I switched my renderer from software to OpenGL, I had to wait a couple seconds between the boxer selection and pre-fight options, and my loading time between the pre-fight options and the ringwalk cutscenes was greater than the records(probably due to using an emulator). I also let each ringwalk cutscene play for a second because I didn't know it would be counted and I had to change round time from 60 seconds to 180 in the pre fight options.

So which way is the correct way to count time?

Hello! Sorry for a very late response, I haven't had the time to check this one out. So you count from when you are in the loading screen of selecting your fighter.