To be clear: I don’t know for sure that what happened on this week’s episode of “NXT” has never happened before, mainly because I don’t think anyone has ever gone through the history of American wrestling and calculated the gender disparity for every TV episode, and I am not currently prepared to be the first. There are also nebulous definitions in play; it’s possible that Impact Wrestling, for example, has accomplished a similar feat, but Impact has never been a “major” promotion in the way that WWE and AEW are. Moreover, “NXT” in the “2.0” era and beyond has been notorious for presenting more than the usual amount of women’s division content, especially when the Women’s Breakout Tournament comes around. Notably, the 5/24/2022 episode of “NXT,” which took place in the middle of the 2022 tournament, ran four consecutive women’s matches just like this past Tuesday’s episode did. But not even that episode reached the heights “NXT” achieved this week, and to figure out why, we can turn to the numbers.

• Of the six matches that took place on NXT, four were women’s matches, doubling the number of men’s matches.
• The total amount of in-ring time for the women, bell to bell, was 24 minutes, 53 seconds. This is more than the men’s total in-ring, time, which was 20 minutes and 29 seconds. Lyra Valkyria vs. Roxanne Perez vs. Indi Hartwell was the longest match of the night at 11 minutes and 55 seconds.
• Women’s matches and non-match segments involving women’s stories were on-screen for a total of 49 minutes, exactly (this includes the backstage segment and subsequent match involving Thea Hail and Jacy Jayne, which included two male characters but is clearly a women’s division storyline).
• Excluding full commercial breaks (but not commercial breaks that took place during matches with picture-in-picture) there was a total of one hour, 39 minutes of screen time on “NXT.” The aforementioned 49 minutes of women’s storytelling represents almost exactly 50% of that time.
• Not counting announcers, backstage interviewers, and referees, 19 female performers and 19 male performers got screen time on “NXT,” an even split.

Here’s my favorite stat: There was a 31-minute stretch of “NXT” television on Tuesday, just before the main event, where the only interruption to women’s division storylines were commercials and a 35-second Brian Pillman Jr. video package. I’m confident in saying nothing like that has ever happened in AEW, and if it’s happened in WWE, nobody remembers.