I ve noticed (i ve known it a long ago) that the FIRST ROUND of every fight gives you an extra second in the timer. Every fight starts with 90 seconds in ladder, but it takes one second to set to 89, but in the NEXT ROUND, the timer, almost instantly, sets to 89.

So if you want to calculate any strategy to get a specific time or something, if you do it in the first round, remember to add an extra second.

Just to add, the best time posible, in a fight, with Jhonny Cage (That i ve got) in a fight (No Goro, Kintaro or Shao Kahn) is 16 seconds (No expert) (No Skarlet). But in an expert ladder run the best i ve got is 17, i think it s not possible with Shang Tsung cause his IA is shit and doesn t let you connect the hits that are needed to get a good time.

Yo thanks for pointing this out. Actually we encountered this with MK11 as well. As I understand it, the 2nd round will take the "half second left over from the previous round" and round it down on the display. Thats supposedly why it happens. There is an "invisible 90.238" for example on the timer on the second round as opposed to it being a full 90.999.