Women in sports, and more specifically women in wrestling, face a long path to equality and equity when compared to their counterparts. Progress depends greatly on willing promoters. Promoters need the willingness, fans need patience.
Slow progress is still progress, but in a time when other women’s sports are seeing an increase in attendance and viewership, the positioning of women’s wrestling stays relatively fixed and constant.
Diario AS shared that 4.85 million people watched the 2022 women’s NCAA final game; an 18% increase from the previous year. When considering “traditional” sports, 49% of fans are women.
The numbers for WWE’s audience don’t stray too far, according to PlayToday; 40% of WWE’s audience in 2020 were women.
Surely wrestling companies with weekly programming would want to tap into this audience and follow this trend, right? If more fans are watching women’s sports, it would be safe to assume promotions would respond by featuring their women’s divisions more.
Over the last few years, numbers tell another story.
Before diving into the meat of the analysis, it must be addressed that not everyone is a fan of women’s wrestling. While it’s certainly behind the times to completely avoid women’s sports, it’s not unheard of. Fans are entitled to like what they like and watch what they want to watch.
For women’s wrestling fans, the issue arises when promoters and bookers relay trust and faith in their women’s divisions but fail to deliver results. Women’s wrestling fans, too, are allowed to clamor for the type of wrestling they want. Both advocates and fans want to see a systematic change in how women athletes are presented in media, how much of them we see in the ring and an increase in opportunities that properly represent the talent that exists.
With all of this in mind, in an attempt to see where wrestling waivers, women’s wrestling stats were collected on promotions with weekly or consistent programming that is viewable on television, online subscriptions, streaming platforms or on pay-per-view. To get a proper look at women’s progress in comparison to their male counterparts, the wrestling promotions must have both a women’s division and a men’s division.
- Areas where data was collected spells out where, when and how many women were used: wrestling shows, PPVs, rosters, titles and main events.
- Show measurements: what percentage of total matches and match time had women, show cards that had zero women’s matches and show cards that had more than two women’s matches.
- PPV measurements: what percentage of total PPV matches and PPV match time had women. PPV time and match stats include pre-shows.
Other percentages include how many titles a women can hold in a promotion and how many women were on their roster. The number of main events featuring women for both PPVs and shows were tallied as well. Rosters were pulled from official websites, and a title was added to the women’s percentage if at least one woman has competed for it.
Data was pulled from cagematch.net and profightdb.com, along with rewatches for any data not found.
Let’s start the breakdown with a side-by-side comparison between 2022 and 2023 for shows that ran both years. Below are graphs representing yearly changes in percentage of matches and match time that had women present.
From year-to-year, brands stay consistently low. If the goal is 50%, the percentages don’t come close. There’s not much change in either category for any brand. Sure, a year is a short amount of time when creating huge shifts in booking, but stagnant numbers are not promising for the future.
Even more interesting is looking at the two graphs together. NWA increased how many women’s matches it had but the time they got was the same. In 2022 and 2023, the AEW women’s division had, on average, more matches than it had time from bell-to-bell on Dynamite.
Now, what you’re undoubtedly waiting for: a brand-to-brand comparison. The quick comparison graphic below lists stats not shown in the above graphs.
There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s clear from the get-go that no one brand or show is the top dog in women’s wrestling. NXT has a roster to brag about, TNA lets women compete for most of its titles, and ROH has featured at least two women’s matches on every single show card. ROH and Rampage both have a high number of women’s main events on weekly shows. PPV stats are bleaker.
AEW brands all share the same PPV stats because there is no clear brand split. They give women 16.8% of PPV matches and only 9.8% of PPV match time. They’re painful numbers, but they aren’t the only ones. TNA has a women’s roster that makes up 25.4% of its total roster, but are only giving them 16% of total PPV matches.
SmackDown had four shows in 2023 that had zero women’s matches. For a brand that has preached a women’s revolution, the expectation is that it would have women on every show.
MLW says it’s working on building a women’s featherweight division, but besides a few titleholders, has failed to create an actual division — or give the women time on their shows. Twenty-five shows out of 47 had zero women’s matches. MLW would do well to tap into the talent it does have, like current champ Janai Kai, and focus on outreach.
AEW has a well-known issue of failing to book more than one women’s match on a show, and it’s nearly the same for their PPVs. Out of its eight PPVs, five had only one women’s match. For a company with two women’s titles, it’s hard to believe those titles can’t be defended more.
For the most part, the numbers from brand-to-brand are not so different that it would reveal an incredibly problematic company, or a shining example of what a promotion should do with their women.
The real issue stands out like a sore thumb: Women’s wrestling is treated nowhere near equal. Treading around the 25-33% mark, or worse, is not advancing women in sports.
Promotions will argue that the stories outside of the ring matter, too. That’s true — to a point. Many fans want to care about the wrestlers in the ring; they need story and a reason to cheer or boo. As a kayfabe sport, that makes sense. But without women in the ring, we can’t really argue that a company is advancing a women’s sport. At the heart of every fan is a person who wants to see competition: blood, sweat, and a story finished.
The issue carries over year-to-year. How long can we hear promotions boast about their women’s division, their greatness, their talent, and then not give them time? Creating a 50/50 environment for men and women is not easy, especially when a promoter has booked themselves into a brick wall.
How does WWE create opportunities for a healthy 15 women if they can’t book 35 men? How can AEW create room on a card for their women’s division that only makes up 21.8% of their total roster? How does MLW move forward with eight women to their 39 men? It’s not an overnight change, but the changes need to be made if women are to be treated equal.
Why is creating equality in wrestling important? Besides the desire for fairness, sports have a long-reaching influence.
If you’ve ever watched a wrestling show and the camera scans over to a young person smiling bright and big, you’ve seen the reach wrestling has. Young girls have openly told Bianca Belair she’s a role model and they’re happy someone on TV looks like them.
Representation, equality and equity in women’s wrestling starts in the ring. It’s up to the promoters to make that a priority and book with those goals in mind. Sometimes, that means teaching your audience. If they only present what they’ve always presented, the numbers will never increase.
When women are treated as the sideshow, like women in wrestling were for so many years, it communicates that women are not strong and not worthy. Gone are the years of panties and bras matches, but there’s still work to do. Safety, pay, energy, time and faith are the ingredients needed to grow an industry for women in all areas of wrestling. Ingredients we can all share.
It takes patience to see real growth and positive progress. Mindsets and systematic issues don’t improve overnight. Women’s wrestling fans have patience, but are growing restless. It’s time for the revolution to really knock on the door.
The fans will wait, if the promoters are willing.