Women’s Wrestling on TV in 2025

I started looking at this back in 2021 because for a few weeks things looked really bleak on Smackdown, like so little time for women’s wrestling that if you blinked you missed it.  Or at least it felt that way, and that led me to start tracking just how much women’s wrestling on TV we were getting.  There have been ups and downs along the way and now and in 2025 came some new developments, which posed some new questions, like: 

• Will NXT keep up the pace that they’ve held since 2022?
• How will the new time lengths affect RAW and Smackdown?
• Will Dynamite continue with the gains they made last year, or backslide?
• Will the NXT partnership help TNA beef their slate back up to where it was before last year?

For anyone new, here’s exactly what I’m measuring:

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

This year I did eliminate two categories – number of matches over 10 minutes and number of matches under 4 minutes.  While I still keep track of them the number of sub-4 minute matches has fallen so far that it’s not an issue any more, and everyone should be commended for that. That’s a real victory in this struggle; no longer is major wrestling TV ridden with 25 to 40 percent of their women’s matches going less than 4 minutes; it’s down to under 20 percent now across all WWE brands, AEW, and TNA.

Lastly, I have a category that’s more subjective, Weekly Wins. A Weekly Win goes to the show that had the best combination of number of matches, women wrestling, and ring time in a week.

All numbers are for matches completed by December 26, 2025. For a look at last year check out Women’s Wrestling on TV in 2024.

Monday Night RAW

• Matches per week: 1.54
• Women wrestling per week: 4.04
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 17:14
• Average Match Time: 11:04
• Number of women with 10 matches: 9
• Main Events: 7
• Weekly wins: 8

The move to Netflix has completely changed how the show is formatted, and that affected the women’s matches.  In going from 3 hours to 2 hours last fall and then to 2 and a half hours in 2025 RAW has shrunk from a 6 or 7 match show to a 4 or 5 match show (or even as low as 3 some weeks). The 3 hour RAW in 2024 averaged 1.88 women’s matches last year but that fell to 1.38 when it went to 2 hours in the Fall and is halfway between this year. January was pretty tepid to the tune of 1.25 matches for 3.5 women but things got better in February (1.75/4.5) thanks to the Elimination Chamber qualifying matches.   Then March brought back the WrestleMania season vortex to the tune of 1.2 matches and 2.4 women wrestling per week, the worst single month for RAW since January and February of 2020.

The rest of the year was a mixed bag.  July and October were strong, both doing better than 2024 but the other months were worse than their counterparts from last year. And November 24 brought a return of the dreaded goose egg with no women’s matches and no women wrestling all night, the first time since 2020. In a world where the women’s roster is double it’s size from 2016 and 2017 there is no excuse to ever have a absolute zero week. Even with eight women from the RAW roster slated for a PLE at the end of that week there were still seven women free and available to put in the ring that night. That is completely unacceptable in 2025. The averages don’t tell the whole story, though. Through the first 35 weeks of the year they had 20 episodes with only one women’s match, a 60% clip.  But in the 17 weeks since it only happened five times so on one front things did get better as the year went on. 

And finally there was one more logistical addition in the form of the women’s Intercontinental title. Like everything else on RAW it was a mixed bag. In theory it was supposed to get more women on TV, particularly some who previously had to make due with less. But for most of the year it didn’t do that, and instead just added a belt to what was already going on. That helps in making those women’s matches more important but it didn’t do much to get anyone more ring time who hadn’t been getting much or any at all. Of the three women who held the title this year Lyra Valkyria had one more match on RAW than she did last year and current champ Maxxine actually had over twice as many matches last year (11) as she did so far this year (5), but they were all centered around the title. So yeah, a mixed bag.

There were some major bright spots for RAW this year.  In the second half of the year they put together a solid core of women – Lyra, Roxxane Perez, Raquel Rodriguez, Bayley, Iyo Sky, and Kairi Sane – who can put on good matches and don’t need to be kept away from certain opponents and who can win or lose as the story calls for it. Added to Becky Lynch, Rhea Ripley, Asuka, and current World Champion Stephanie Vaquer that’s as solid as roster as you’re going to see anywhere.  They had the same number of main events (7) as last year, and the average total ring time went up by over two minutes and the average match time is up by almost four minutes from 2024.

Total verdict on RAW? Some parts were up, some parts were down so statistically it’s a virtual wash compared to 2024. But qualitatively I’d call it a step up. Getting Lynch and Asuka back while bringing Bayley over from Smackdown and calling up Roxanne and Vaquer from NXT were a huge boost, as was the brief time that Naomi was on board before going out on maternity leave. Losing Liv Morgan in June hurt but thankfully they had enough talent on board to pick up the slack until she returned. If I were to give it a grade I’d go with a B-.

Smackdown (3 hour/2 hour)

• Matches per week: 1.92/1.31
• Women wrestling per week: 5.5/3.58
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 19:20/10:33
• Average match time: 10:03/7:46
• Number of women with 10 matches: 12
• Main Events: 3/1
• Weekly wins: 7/1

We need to put the 3 hour Smackdown in the time capsule along with the last four years of NXT. It was without a doubt the best usage of a women’s roster on main roster WWE television ever. It was better all around than all but one year of 3 hour RAWs (2021), and had more total ring time and a higher average match time than any year of 3 hour RAWs, ever. They had title matches, a title change, several main events, you name it. The 2 hour Smackdown on the other hand is the exact opposite with less of almost everything than anyone.

What happened? Well, there was virtually no middle ground on the roster and not much depth – there were six women who got regular TV time (Tiffany Stratton, Charlotte Flair, Alexa Bliss, Nia Jax, Jade Cargill, and Chelsea Green) and after that it was like Hertz and Not Exactly. Adding Giulia was supposed to help but she ended up stuck in a purgatory of sorts where she got to beat up on the lower half of the roster but wasn’t getting enough traction with the audience to face anyone in the top half and win. The rest of the roster was booked like jobbers, and the end result was three women fighting for the main title (Stratton, Jax and Cargill) while Flair and Bliss were in the tag team division and Green was all things to all people, a role that she excelled in.

It didn’t help Bianca Belair went to RAW for WrestleMania season and then was injured the rest of the year, and that Naomi cashed in the Money in the Briefcase on Iyo Sky from RAW and not Stratton, when she could have spiced things up in the Women’s Title picture where she had been. Post Summerslam there was a gaping hole that could have been filled with some NXT callups but that didn’t happen until Lash Legend came up in November to join the Wargames team.

Lastly the US title, which was supposed to serve the same purpose as the IC title on RAW, did virtually nothing for anyone. Chelsea Green’s character proved to be just as viable without it as with it, although she did and is doing a great job as champion. The other holders of it (Giulia and Zelina Vega) weren’t helped by holding the belt and didn’t get much more time on TV with it than when they were without it. Ultimately it added nothing as far as getting more matches on TV or more women in the ring.

The 3 hour Smackdown gets an A- but it’s hard to give the 2 hour version higher than a C- and that’s being real generous.

NXT

• Matches per week: 2.19
• Women wrestling per week: 6.44
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 19:50
• Average match time: 8:33
• Number of women with 10 matches: 14
• Main Events: 19
• Weekly wins: 24

In 2024 NXT hit marks for matches per week and women wrestling per week that we so high that I questioned if they could keep them. They didn’t but don’t fret. It continued to excel, running 3 or more matches in 18 out of 52 weeks so far, and at least 2 matches in 43 episodes.  No complaints at all there.  And they did find something to improve on: the ring time, which they raised to the highest amount ever for women on a weekly coed wrestling show. Averaging almost 20 minutes of ring time is unheard of, and they don’t just fill the space with matches for the sake of doing it; every woman on TV has some role in some kind of angle or story that’s going on.  That they continue to do so year after year in just two hours (and it’s a hard two hours since moving over to the CW), is both praiseworthy for them and an indictment of everyone else. The average match time also went up significantly from 6:50 to 8:33.  Lastly, they had 19 main events which has got to be a record for any coed wrestling program.

There was some cause for concern during the summer. From mid-June through July the averages plummeted to 1.3 matches and 5 women wrestling per week, and the time fell to 11:46 total and 5:52 per match. Thankfully that turned out to be a blip; from the first week of August forward things went back up to 2.18 matches per week, 7.14 women wrestling and 19:34 of ring time. I think what happened was that the TNA partnership saw an uptick of activity on the men’s side and thus cut into the women’s time. But they seem to have righted the ship and found a better way to incorporate that and still give the women what they’ve been getting.

As for the dip in the number of matches per week and number of women wrestling per week, I think it’s pretty easy to explain; they have less TV time every week because they don’t get any overruns on the CW, so if the match times are longer then there are going to be fewer of them. The biggest surprise number change this year, the increased ring time, is a good one. I think that’s due to the main roster talent being booked, who were all more experienced, and the maturing of the women who’ve been there already. Much of the current NXT women’s roster is coming up on two and three years of TV experience and thus are capable of going longer in the ring.

NXT gets a A again for the year, down just a tad from last year’s A+ but still, no notes.

Dynamite

• Matches per week: 1.08
• Women wrestling per week: 3.69
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 13:05
• Average match time: 11:21
• Number of women with 10 matches: 9
• Main Events: 8
• Weekly wins: 2

Dynamite stayed firmly entrenched in it’s one match a week habit. Nothing else to see here for now. They have run 2 women’s matches in an episode a few times, but one time they did it was because of people not being to make it to the town because of a blizzard and needing to fill the time on TV, so yeah it looks like one women’s match is just going to be their standard practice until it isn’t. Which is a shame because they do have enough good women wrestlers now to make a second match a more frequent thing.

But everything else has gone up significantly.  The women are getting significantly more ring time (4 more minutes) and the average match is 3 minutes longer than a year ago. There are also more women wrestling on TV each week, so much more that they have been able to form a decent tag team division.  That’s also led to more women getting to wrestle more frequently, long a sore spot for them.  And in maybe the most ironic thing given how much they have rightly been maligned for years, they had more women’s TV main events this year than RAW, Smackdown or TNA.

As for a grade for the year I’ll give them a C+. That’s two years of improvement; gone are the days where I can say ‘same as it ever was’ about how they book their division. There’s still some room to grow but they’ve done a lot of that in two years.

TNA

• Matches per week: 1.57
• Women wrestling per week: 5.68
• Minutes of women wrestling per week: 12:17
• Average match time: 7:20
• Number of women with 10 matches: 10
• Main Events: 3
• Weekly wins: 11

TNA was in a bad way last year, but in 2025 they got all their numbers back up and are looking much better. The NXT partnership has been a huge part of that, bringing an influx of usable talent that enabled them to book more matches every week, one of whom (Mara Sade, formerly Jakara Jackson) even signed with them after getting released from WWE. They could stand to book more main events for the women and inexplicably had 3 weeks with total goose eggs, but everything else was much better in 2025. Last year I gave them a participation trophy C-, this year they have a deserved C+.

2025 takeaways

NXT is the champ for the fourth straight year. There was a little dip in the second half of the year but they recovered, and they had no competition once Smackdown went back to two hours. This makes 4 years in a row that NXT has done more in two hours than anyone else ever in the history of televised wrestling and that RAW and Smackdown did in 2.5 or 3. As for the rankings with some abbreviated numbers, here’s how they look:

1. NXT (2.2 matches, 6.4 women wrestling, 19:50 total ring time)
2. 3 hour Smackdown (1.9, 5.5, 19:20)
3. RAW (1.6, 4.0, 17:14)
4. TNA (1.6, 5.7, 12:18)
5. AEW Dynamite (1.1, 3.6, 13:05)
6. 2 hour Smackdown (1.3, 3.3, 10:33)

When you add things up for 2025 there are almost the same number of women’s matches (9.7 vs 9.8 for 2024) and women wrestling every week (28.5 vs 29), but significantly more average ring time (15:22, up from 12:43 for 2024) and the average match is two minutes longer in aggregate. That’s a major positive development. There have also been more main events, 41 so far vs 29 for 2024. TNA and Dynamite had the widest range of improvement as they were both up in 5 out of 6 statistical categories, and the lone drop off was miniscule. TNA was only one TV main event short of tying last year’s total, and Dynamite is only down from 1.11 to 1.08 in matches per week after 11 months. NXT was 50/50 on improvements vs regressions and it’s pretty simple to explain: longer matches meant fewer matches, and using talent from the main roster and TNA meant fewer matches for the in house roster. RAW and Smackdown were both a bit more complicated so you can refer to what I said earlier on both of them. But overall I say this year is a step up from last year and a big step up from 2023.