It’s time for everyone’s favorite AEW punchline: women’s wrestling!

I want to believe this company is serious about better featuring its female talent, but the data says otherwise. Tonight’s “Dynamite” was a new low, with a four-way match for a shot at the AEW Women’s World Championship receiving less than three and a half minutes of television time (excluding the three-minute picture-in-picture commercial break). By the way, Toni Storm got the win (blink and you’ll miss it) and she’ll be challenging Saraya for the title next week at “Dynamite: Grand Slam.”

It’s been just over a month since Hikaru Shida defeated Storm for the AEW Women’s title, a match that was the main event of “Dynamite” and got more than ten minutes of TV time on top of a picture-in-picture break. It was a good match and a great moment for Shida, but it’s now clearly an anomaly amidst the recent trend of drastically dwindling time for women’s matches on “Dynamite.”

The following is a list of the total TV time the women’s matches got on recent episodes of “Dynamite,” excluding the picture-in-picture commercial break:

• August 9: Hikaru Shida vs. Anna Jay – 6:00
• August 16: Britt Baker vs. The Bunny – 4:45
• August 23: Ruby Soho vs. Skye Blue – 4:45
• August 30: Britt Baker, Hikaru Shida & Kris Statlander vs. Emi Sakura, Nyla Rose & Marina Shafir – 4:30
• September 6: Kris Statlander vs. Emi Sakura – 4:25 (no picture-in-picture commercial break)
• September 13: Toni Storm vs. Hikaru Shida vs. Britt Baker vs. Nyla Rose – 3:30

Noticing a pattern here?

In the weeks prior to Shida’s main event title win, things were different. Here’s the total TV time (again, excluding the picture-in-picture commercial breaks) that the women’s matches on “Dynamite” got during the weeks leading up to the Shida-Storm title match.

• July 5: Britt Baker vs. Ruby Soho – 7:20
• July 12: Ruby Soho vs. Skye Blue – 6:00
• July 19: Britt Baker vs. Kayla Sparks – 1:05 (no picture-in-picture commercial break*)
• July 26: Britt Baker vs. Taya Valkyrie – 7:00

*The Baker-Sparks match stands out as an outlier; that was the “Dynamite” episode that included the lengthy Blood & Guts match in the main event.

Professional wrestling is about more than just the matches, and we did get a backstage interview with Saraya and a hype video for a TBS Title match between Kris Statlander and Jade Cargill coming up on Friday’s “Rampage,” but this is getting ridiculous.