Women’s Wrestling on TV in 2023

Note: this is the complete report for 2023.  For previous year’s tallys and commentary you can check out 2021 and 2022.

For those who are new to reading my work, I started doing this in 2021 because it sure felt like the women’s divisions in WWE were getting shortchanged on TV, particularly on Smackdown.  So to be sure I decided to look at just how many women’s matches were getting booked on all the shows, and how much time they were getting.  After 2021 I decided to keep the party going, mainly to see if there would be any improvement or not year to year. To that end last year saw big gains for NXT and Impact, while RAW took a step back and Smackdown and Dynamite more or less maintained status quo.  So what about 2023?  Now let me make clear what my philosophy is here:

Should there be a quota of matches every week?  No.  But should there regularly be more than one match a week?  Yes.  With two or three hours of television for each show, and the size of the women’s rosters in the two biggest companies, then there’s no reason to have just one every week or God forbid zero matches in any episode. Even if one is a squash match against a local talent, there are more than enough resources to make that happen instead of just having none.   

But matches aren’t all there is!  What about promos, vignettes, backstage fights, and what not?

Matches alone aren’t the only thing that matter, but they cannot simply be replaced by those other things.  Too many times that is exactly what happens, and we’re told that those other things are sufficient.  If this was 2016 and there were only five or six healthy women on each show then that would be fine, but when you have over ten women and up to twenty to use then you should use them in the ring.  We don’t see this lack of action on the mens’ side.  The women’s rosters in WWE and AEW are the largest they’ve ever been.  Between RAW and Smackdown there are over 30 women who can get in the ring, and women make up one third of the main roster.  AEW also has it’s biggest roster ever and has women who work for Ring of Honor but do cross over.  So there should be more just off of having more women there.

By my own made up standard, you should have one match for every hour of television.  Why?  Because they’ve shown plenty of times that they are capable of just that, so why not make it the norm?  There is plenty of time that can be taken from overlong or redundant men’s matches and promo segments to carve out the space.  Should things be exactly 50/50?  No, because the rosters aren’t 50/50.  If that ever happens then by all means yes.  But can there be weeks where you have a 50/50 split, or even a majority of women’s matches?  Absolutely!  But anyway, let’s get to it.

One last thing: Main events refer to matches that ended the show, not just the last match of the night itself.

Monday Night RAW

• Total matches: 90, up from 86 for 2022
• Matches per week: 1.76, up from 1.68 for 2022
• Matches under four minutes: 35, up from 32 for 2022
• Women wrestling per week: 5.14, up from 4.98 for 2022
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 12:29, down from 15:12 for 2022
• Women who’ve wrestled 10 matches or more: 11, the same as 2022
• Main event matches: 5, down from 15 for 2022

Two words that can best describe RAW after 2023 are: consistently inconsistent.  RAW finished ahead of last year for the number of matches run and number of women wrestling every week.  But outside of that it fell short.  TV main events plummeted from 15 to 5, and the total ring time dropped from 15 to 12 minutes for the year.   The average total ring time pre and post-draft went down from 14:30 to 11:27, and the rate of sub 4 minute matches almost doubled from 8 of 31 (25%) before to 27 of 59 (46%) after the draft.  And there were long gaps in between matches, anywhere from two to four months, for several women.  Statistically here was RAW in a nutshell: 1.4 matches and 3.2 women wrestling in January, 2.5 and 7.25 in February, 1.55 and 4.88 from March through May, 1.9 and 5.5 in June and July, 1.5 and 3.5 in August, and 1.87 and 5.71 from September forward (including 2 and 9 during November).

When you have over 10 women available all year, 20 post-draft and 18 even after a bunch of injuries and departures, there’s no excuse for that kind of fluctuation.  They find ways to cook up creative reasons for 4 or 5 men’s matches every week, so they should be able to do that for 2 women’s matches all year and not just for four to six months.  As for the drop in main events, you can blame it on both the men getting a proper world title, and fewer women considered worthy to put in them – Alexa Bliss was out after January and Rhea Ripley was mostly involved in Judgement Day matters, leaving Bayley, Becky Lynch, Asuka, and Bianca Belair as the only ones to regularly put there early on.  Post draft it got worse as Bayley, Asuka, and Belair went over to Smackdown leaving only Ripley and Lynch, who were mostly kept apart all year for obvious reasons, to anchor a main event match.  

When RAW did have a bump it was largely from renewed attention to the women’s tag team titles.  For seven weeks, from June 5 through July 17, RAW averaged 2.14 matches and 6.57 women wrestling per week, the best stretch for matches of the year, thanks to the boost from the women’s tag team titles being contested for again.  This happened again in November when the averages went up again to 2 matches per week and 9  women wrestling per week, the best single month for women wrestling in matches that I’ve ever tracked on the main roster.  So when there is some specific thing to necessitate more matches and participation – tag titles, filling spots for Elimination Chamber or Money in the Bank – things go up, and then they revert back to a pedestrian pace for the rest of the year.  There’s an obvious pattern of gearing up for certain things as needed, but the depth to which things can fall in between, especially for a three hour show, is not good.

Digging beneath the surface a bit, November was a huge improvement not just because of the women’s tag team stuff but also because they used Lynch to give a few people longer matches than they normally get, in the same way they did with Bianca last year and Charlotte Flair and Asuka in 2021.  Over the last two months of the year RAW had much more involvement from the full roster in the out of the ring aspects of the show, and finished up strong in December.   But overall in 2023 it was a show of high peaks and low valleys, statistically speaking. 

Creatively RAW was also hit and miss.  The feud with Damage Control vs Becky and whoever she could find dragged on from 2022 through WrestleMania.  The build for Auska and Bianca’s Mania match was the most basic, WWE 2k Universe Mode kind of stuff topped off by them not being on RAW at all during the go home show.  Becky’s feud with Trish Stratus lumbered along for months before an excellent finish in the final six days.  Rhea Ripley was more occupied leading Judgement Day than as women’s champion.  Things did finish strong when Lynch’s run as NXT Women’s champion in the fall got some more singles matches on TV and there was some renewed focus on the tag team titles. Things also picked up when Nia Jax returned and gave them another woman they could put in TV that the audience was already into, and who offered something different.  I think it’s safe to that creatively RAW had some good spots but there was a whole lot of mediocre to bad work being done in the writing room all year.

Smackdown

• Total matches: 57, down from 69 for 2022
• Matches per week: 1.12, down from 1.33 for 2022
• Matches under four minutes: 22, down from 30 for 2022
• Women wrestling per week: 3.55 down from 3.90 for 2022
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 8:29, up from 8:34 for 2022
• Women who’ve wrestled 10 matches or more: 6, down from 9 for 2022
• Main event matches: 5, up from 3 in 2022

Smackdown was both up and down compared to last year.  Fewer matches and women wrestling every week but more long matches and more main events.  There were two consistent storylines all year – Charlotte’s January program with Sonya Deville and the shape-shifting feud pitting Damage Control vs Bianca, Charlotte, Shotzi and various partners along the way.  The build for the Womens’ Title Match at WrestleMania wasn’t any better than RAWs and fell far behind last year’s for Charlotte and Ronda Rousey.  Ronda and Charlotte were getting physical in some way or another almost every week whereas Charlotte and Rhea had three interactions in nine weeks, got physical once, and the creative people ignored 95 percent of the history they had together to focus on only one of their many previous matches against each other.

The sheer lack of effort to do much of anything substantive creatively for six months could be found in the complete absence of any TV main events coming from the women’s division in the first half of the year. Before Bianca challenged Asuka in July the last time they’d run a women’s main event on Smackdown was the Charlotte/Ronda Beat the Clock Challenge on May 6 of 2022.  Obviously the Bloodline saga is still the biggest and best thing on the blue brand but with Roman Reigns not being on TV every week, there was space to run more women’s main events with the talent they had should they have chosen to do so.  Nothing encapsulates this more than when on November 17 for the fifth time this year they had zero women’s matches.  If you’re telling me that on five different occasions they couldn’t cook something up creatively to make room for one match, I’m not gonna listen to you.  You will not justify having ZERO women’s matches on a two hour show when you have ten women or more available every week.

There were also some really long gaps in between matches for several women.  Mia Yim did not wrestle on TV between June 16 and December 22, and the team of Alba Fyre & Isla Dawn didn’t have a televised match after June 23.  Until the last episode on December 22 Zelina Vega hadn’t wrestled on TV since October 13 and Shotzi since November 3.  There’s no reason to do this at all, not when there’s at least one men’s match every week that goes two or three minutes longer than it needs to.

So all in all a lesser performance for Smackdown so far in 2023 – but on a positive note, a few things improved as the year went on.  There have been more long (over 10 minutes) matches, and post draft  the average total match time went from 6:48 to 9:18, which I think can be attributed to Bianca, Asuka, Iyo and Bayley coming over in the draft to join Charlotte.  And in the second half of the year the women got 5 main events, more than the entirety of 2022.  The last six months were an improvement over the first six, but not enough to forget that they happened.

NXT

• Total matches: 115, down from 125 for 2022
• Matches per week: 2.21, down from 2.39 for 2022
• Matches under four minutes as of December 12: 48, the same as 2022
• Women wrestling per week: 6.12, down from 6.67 for 2022
• Minutes of women’s wrestling per week as of December 12, 2023: 14:42, down from 15:26 for 2022
• Number of women with at least 10 matches: 11, down from 18 for 2022
• Main event matches: 11, down from 12 for 2022

For the year, NXT was down from 2022.  Things were starting to look bad in September, but October was a huge rebound month.  In August and September the average number of matches per week fell to 1.78 from 2.23 through July, but October saw a huge leap to an astounding 3.75 matches per week and 8.25 women wrestling per week, the best overall month I’ve ever tracked.  It’s safe to say that the first number is the highest number of matches per night for any month ever, and the latter is in some pretty rarified air itself.  While some of it can be attributed to the NXT Women’s Breakout Tournament, the rest is just a choice by Shawn Micheals to book more women’s matches.  While they finished behind last year’s record breaking pace, they were still far ahead of the rest of the pack.

The only caveat to NXT’s count is that so many of their matches, almost half, are under four minutes; but that’s to be expected when you are dealing with a roster that has so little experience.  But that doesn’t change the fact that they out-represent every other show most weeks, and some weeks do more than RAW and Smackdown combined.  It’s wild that they are under the same umbrella as RAW and Smackdown considering the stark difference in presentations.  They’re also lapping the field creatively.  Every week they have multiple plotlines going and every woman who gets on TV seems to have something going on other than just getting in the ring.  Even in what is a down year for them they’re still far ahead of everyone else.

Dynamite

• Total matches: 52, down from 53 for 2022
• Matches per week: 1, down from 1.02 for 2022
• Matches under four minutes: 4, down from 7 for 2022
• Women wrestling per week: 2.38, down from 2.69 for 2022
• Minutes of women’s wrestling per week: 8:17, down from 8:32 as of December 21, 2022
• Women with 10 matches or more: 4, up from 3 for 2022
• Main event matches: 5, up from 2 for 2022

Same s-, different year.  Same as it ever was.  There’s nothing much to say here.  The numbers are virtually the same as a year ago and show no signs of changing in the future.   Creatively they had the feud between Saraya and the Outcasts vs Britt Baker, Jamie Hayter and all the other AEW natives which eventually ended with a whimper and now things look as if Tony Khan is picking names out of a hat every week.  And then there’s the weird pocket universe that Jade Cargill was running in before she lost the TBS Title, and ultimately left the company.   Who knows what they’re doing, to be honest. They put together some interesting character work with Toni Storm and Julia Hart over the last couple of months but outside of that little made sense at all.  Even Storm’s title quest was gummed up with a pointless third short title reign by Hikaru Shida; Storm beating former mate Saraya was the story to go with but instead they did a cheap pop title change in between that served no one.  Le Sigh……..

Impact

• Total matches: 56, down from 78 for 2022
• Matches per week: 1.17, down from 1.56 for 2022
• Women wrestling per week: 3.67, down from 4.24 for 2022
• Minutes of women’s wrestling per week: 10:34, down from 10:47 for 2022
• Women with 10 matches or more: 8, the down from 9 for 2022
• Main event matches: 6, down from 9 for 2022

2023 was as a major step back from last year’s progress for Impact.  They’ve lost several players from last year – The Inspiration, Mia Yim, Chelsea Green, Taya Valkyrie (again), Rachel Ellering, and Lady Frost – and didn’t sufficiently replace them. Then champion Mickie James went out injured, and Jordynn Grace’s contract expired. But while they were short that doesn’t mean we just give them a pass and let them get away with cutting things almost in half.  As I always say, you cannot let up or else they will slack off.  Some drop off is understandable given the circumstances but there’s got to be some middle ground between where they were in 2022 and where they landed in 2023. 

All that being said, numbers aside the division has gotten a breath of fresh air in the form of Trinity, who arrived with a bang and has taken the division by storm on her way to winning the Knockouts Title.   In fact since she arrived Impact has become a case of numbers not telling the whole story.  They are still a factor, of course, but unlike the other shows Impact does have something going on to counteract them.  A fairer grade for them would be something close to Incomplete given all that’s happened.

2023 in conclusion

The short versions:

• RAW: more matches than last year, but wildly inconsistent in all other places
• Smackdown: less of everything, except main events, much better after  June 1 than before
• NXT: a little less of everything than last year but still way more than everyone else
• Dynamite: no major changes, other than more main events
• Impact: Fell back pretty steep this year

All in all I gotta call it unsatisfying compared to previous years.  The biggest issue by far on the WWE main roster is the ups and downs of storytelling on RAW and Smackdown, which fluctuated from pretty good at best to non-existent.  That continued a practice that’s been happening since late last year, and a few good months at the end of 2023 do not sweep it under the rug.  That leaves NXT as the only place in WWE that’s consistently making an effort creatively with their whole division. Kudos to them but the rest of the company needs to pick it up.

As for the world outside of WWE, well…….  Impact had a great story going with Mickie James title chase and subsequent title reign, but her injury cut that short.  They’ve had a couple of other things going on with their tag team titles and with Trinity’s arrival but 2024 is uncertain as several of the contracts are expiring.  As I mentioned above, AEW has transitioned from the not good Outcasts story to some welcome character work from Toni Storm and Julia Hart.  Numbers wise they are exactly in the same place they’ve always been.  And while I am not tracking them because I just don’t have the time I will give a nod to MLW for restarting their division this year, and to Ring of Honor for picking theirs back up as well.

So to do something new, here’s how I rank the five shows as of October 28:

Number Totals and averages: 1. NXT, 2. RAW, 3. Smackdown, 4. Impact, 5. Dynamite

Match Distribution (number of matches for given TV time): 1. NXT, 2. RAW, 3. Impact, 4. Smackdown, 5. Dynamite

Use of Wrestlers (number of women wrestling for given TV time): 1. NXT, 2. Impact, 3. Smackdown, 4. RAW, 5. Dynamite

Ring Time (how much over the given TV time): 1. NXT, 2. Impact, 3. Smackdown,  4. RAW, 5.  Dynamite

Overall rankings: 1. NXT, 2. RAW, 3. Smackdown 4. Impact, 5. Dynamite

NXT by far makes the best use of their time, Dynamite easily the worst, while the other three have been wildly inconsistent all year.  RAW and Smackdown got better in November while Impact tailed off.  Now here’s the tricky part.  Statically Impact edged out Smackdown for third place by a Razor thin margin, but they flat-out did not pass the eye test over WWE’s blue brand.  They had four different clip shows throughout the year, which meant that they stayed ahead by not having as many chances to disappoint.  There was likely to be at least one bad week that pulled their averages down had they run regular shows those four times.  So I gave Smackdown a referee’s decision for third place.

Going in 2024, RAW is already starting off with a bang having scheduled 3 matches for it’s inaugural episode of the year. The challenges for each brand?

RAW: consistency, particularly with the women’s tag team titles.

Smackdown: keep up the second half of 2023’s pace and do more creatively all year long.

NXT: as this class matures, start giving them more match time

Impact: stabilize the roster so they can move closer to 2022’s performance

Dynamite: who are we kidding?