Women’s Wrestling on TV in 2024

POST DRAFT SPECIAL

I’m back at it! This year has seen some positive movement after 18 months of backsliding and stagnation everywhere, save for NXT which was on an island of high achievement while the others were floundering. We haven’t reached a point of utopia just yet but we’re closer now than we were a year ago for sure. To catch anyone up who needs it, here’s what I’m counting:

• Number of matches per week
• Number of women wrestling per week (intergender and mixed tag matches do not count as matches, but do count for time and participation)
• Women’s ring time per week
• Number of main events this year (main events are matches that close the show, not the last match on the show)
• Number of women with at least 10 matches on one show (RAW, Smackdown, etc)

All numbers are as of May 4, 2024.

Monday Night RAW

• Matches per week: 1.94, up from 1.76 for 2023
• Women wrestling per week: 7.5, up from 5.14 for 2023
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 13:44, up from 12:29 for 2023
• Main Events: 2
• Women with 10 matches: 4

RAW got off to a really good start this year. For the first 12 weeks they averaged 2 matches per week, 7.75 women wrestling (note: even if you take out the two battle royals they’re still at and all time high 6.4 women wrestling per week so far), and 16 minutes of ring time.Over those first 12 weeks the four top women on the roster – Rhea Ripley, Becky Lynch, Nia Jax and Liv Morgan – were getting regular match duty and more importantly were fighting each other. That maximized the match times and got a main event between Lynch and Jax. The women’s tag team champs were more active at the same time, both Kayden Carter & Katana Chance and the Kabuki Warriors got defenses in during those first 12 weeks, and there were some contenders matches to set up a challenger for a March 11 title shot. All of these things led to more women on TV and more total ring time.

So what happened? The WrestleMania vortex came, effectively shutting the whole division for the second year in a row. From March 25 to April 15 the averaged combined match time was under six minutes with six out of the seven matches being under four minutes. A real damning statistic is that out of all the sub 5 minute matches on RAW this year (I counted 20), 75 percent of them so far (I counted 15) have been on the women’s side. In both 2022 and 2023 the women’s side had less than 50 percent of the sub 5 minute matches on RAW, so this is a huge jump. By contrast on Smackdown the women’s side has roughly 36 percent of the sub 5 minute matches in 2024, and Dynamite there’s only been one sub 5 minute match all year.

With the draft concluded there is the potential for a better second half of 2024. The addition of Damage Control, Zelina Vega and two NXT draftees to RAW gives them seven fresh bodies who can own the midcard section, challenge for titles, and give a much needed boost to the overall participation level. If used right they can be used in matches to showcase new people and better use some of the remaining ones. With Ripley already on the shelf I don’t expect to see Lynch or Morgan in the ring on TV that much; whatever hope for the division to get more consistent ring time and TV lies with Damage Control this year. I fully expect them to be the workhorses of the division for the rest of the year. Zelina Vega coming over from Smackdown is a plus, Lyra Valkyria from NXT is another good addition on that front, and Kiana James could be one as well. If the post-draft roster gets used to it’s potential it’ll be a huge improvement.

Grade to Date: B–

RAW has been a real struggle of quantity vs. quality. The numbers are higher than last year but beneath the surface there was a lot found to be lacking. The topline of the division was handled very well, but the rest was inconsistent and often just bad. The April 22 battle royal to fill the vacated title summed up the first third of 2024 almost perfectly – three women that had been presented in such a way that the audience could buy them winning and 11 others who no one outside their Moms would have picked to even have a longshot chance. Now that the roster has been revamped we can ask the hard question of whether it was the booking that was so dull and dry in 2023 up until or now or the bookers just didn’t have much confidence in the roster they’d assembled for Mondays for the last 12 months. I’m leaning towards the latter but that doesn’t excuse the former because hey, they’re the ones who put that roster together.

Smackdown

• Matches per week: 1.17, up from 1.12 for 2023
• Women wrestling per week: 3.11, down from 3.55 for 2023
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 9:13, up from 8:29 for 2023
• Main Events: 3

Like RAW, Smackdown started out better than 2023 before regressing. In January and February the women’s side averaged over ten minutes of ring time, which would have been a runaway all time high, but then in March and April it fell to just over eight minutes (8:06), which is in line with every year since 2017. For the year they’re at just over nine minutes, which would still be the best ever edging out 2018’s 8:59. The weekly average of 3.11 women wrestling is the worst since 2018.

Smackdown has become more and more like Dynamite, essentially having one match a week; they used to get a second match more regularly but over the last year that has gone by the wayside and it’s now almost entirely a one match show.  Smackdown as a whole has become increasingly promo laden and less ring action heavy over the years so this isn’t surprising but it’s still disappointing. March 8 and April 5 were particularly bad, both with one match that went a whopping two and a half minutes.

Is there anything to be encouraged about? They’ve had three main events this year, more than any other show that I’m tracking, and now that there isn’t a long game to be played with the women’s title maybe we can get a more concentrated focus on the individuals in what is now a four woman title scene with Bayley, Tiffany Stratton, Nia Jax, and Naomi. That would be a welcome change over last year’s vague, WWE 2k Universe Mode kind of booking that watered everything down and made it all feel less important. The other good thing is that with Bianca and Belair and Jade Cargill as tag team champions that should lead to more tag team matches on TV, which will mean more women getting to wrestle every week.

(Note: Michael Cole called the Tiffany Straton/Mia Yim match on Feb 2 the ‘main event’ on commentary but it came on at 9:30 and was over before 9:45 so I’m not counting it.)

Grade to Date: B–

The individual focus on each woman has been better than last year, but the numbers are still mostly down. The post draft roster looks promising, though. Nia Jax adds to the singles title picture in a very good way, and the Chelsea Green/Piper Niven tag team are two ready made characters that will get TV time. So with a set eight woman regular rotation (last year they had no more than five once the dust settled, and this year so far only Naomi and Tiffany Stratton have been regulars) they should be able improve post draft if they are so inclined.

NXT

• Matches per week: 2.56, up from 2.21 for 2023
• Women wrestling per week: 6.67, up from 6.12 for 2023
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 16:01, up from 14:42 for 2023
• Main Events: 3

NXT has ticked back up in the weekly averages after a slight dip in 2023, but RAW’s resurgence has put them in a virtual tie for first instead of lapping the field like they did in 2022 and 2023.  What counts as a stellar effort on most shows is still just an average week for them, both in the ring and in other areas.  Despite having an hour less than RAW they manage to have the same number of or more women on the show every week. At the same time they have more women than RAW on their roster but still manage to use them all more frequently in some form or another (how often do you see ‘hey, I haven’t gotten to be on TV in forever’ used as an angle in NXT?). NXT remains the standard for women’s wrestling on TV all things considered. Even when RAW has some higher totals like this year so far you got to remember NXT is still doing similar numbers with an hour less of TV, and also consider that they’re posting higher averages from last year without a Women’s Dusty Cap Tag Team Tournament to goose the numbers for a month.

Grade to Date: A

They lost two of their more frequent TV wrestlers, Lyra Valkyria and Blair Davenport, to RAW and Smackdown respectively in the draft so there is a question as to what effect that will have on ring time. But there’s no reason to believe that the number of matches or women wrestling every week will be affected. NXT usually finds a way and I don’t expect any less in 2024.

Dynamite

• Matches per week: 1.06, up from 1 in 2023
• Women wrestling per week: 2.78, up from 2.38 for 2023
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 9:04, up from 8:17 2023
• Main Events: 1

The averages are higher right now but that’s only they’ve been skewed upwards by an 8 woman tag team match on January 10, a rare second match on February 21, and a mixed tag match adding to the ring time on April 17. Take those out and it’s the same as it ever was. The roster is bigger and better than it was a year ago so they can shave a few minutes off those long men’s matches they run every week, it’s not that hard! When you see how some of those men’s matches and segments just hemorrhage viewers there’s no reason not to hand some of that time over to the ladies.

But there are some positives to report. As always the one saving grace for Dynamite is that the one women’s match always gets time. Outside of one squash match nothing has gotten less than six minutes. They also have multiple storylines running now, and the addition of Mercedes Mone has cemented TV time for more than one angle. The division itself has gotten a major talent boost with Willow Nightengale and Mariah May joining Mercedes on Dynamite, and will get another when Britt Baker and Jamie Hayter eventually return. Now is the time to strike, we’ll see if they do.

As a side note, Collision follows the same match patterns as Dynamite. So long as that continues to happen I will continue to leave them out as there is no need for that kind of redundancy. Assume that whatever issues I point out with Dynamite also apply.

Grade to Date: C

I’ve given them a higher grade this year so far because they are focusing on more than one thing every week even if the match count is the same.

TNA

• Matches per week: 1.44, up from 1.12 for 2023
• Women wrestling per week: 3.63, down from 3.67 for 2023
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 7:16, down from 10:34 for 2023
• Main Events: 2

It’s been a weird year for TNA so far. They started two weeks later than everyone but since they’ve been back on TV the number of matches per week were up a tick up from 2023.  Now they stand slighty ahead or equal to last year in most categories but are way behind 2023 on ring time. Unfortunately the roster turnover problem from last year is still a thing with Trinity, Mickie James and Deonna Purazzo all moving on; in the early going of 2024 that’s definitely had an effect on how much match time the women are getting.  They are badly in need of a new, formidable challenger or two for Jordynn Grace or else treading water is the best you can hope for in 2024. We’ll see how it turns out but for the time being they are doing better per week in number of matches and number of women wrestling, even with a zero week in the books.

Grade to Date: C

Until they can land a serious challenger for Grace, they’re using smoke and mirrors to hide the top talent deficiencies and the prognosis is average at best for 2024.

Conclusions so far

After four months 2024 is still looking a little better than 2023, but things have taken a turn for the worst since the beginning of March. Ring time is up for four out of five shows as well. The dearth of main events was a problem everywhere other than Smackdown, and other than NXT everyone was pretty inconsistent from week to week. As for rankings, here’s how I have it so far:

1. NXT
2. RAW
3. Smackdown
4. TNA
5. Dynamite

The gap between 2 and 3 is pretty big right now. For the fourth year in a row, it’s between RAW and NXT for the crown and everyone else is playing for a distant third despite whatever gains they have made. RAW has more women wrestling per week while NXT wins on just about everything else. 2024 has plenty of time to still finish better than last year, but RAW, Smackdown, and TNA in particular are going to have to make some changes to get there. As for questions going forward, I’d pose the following:

• On RAW, will the middle and lower card start to get better treatment now that they’ve been upgraded?
• Will TNA land anyone that can emerge as a serious enough presence to get the ring time back to where it usually is?
• Will Mercedes Mone have any kind of in ring presence on AEW television, and if so how will that affect things?
• Can NXT keep up the pace for a third straight year?