Red Velvet vs. Jade Cargill in a quarterfinal match for the TBS Championship.
Through seven matches, AEW’s TBS Championship Tournament has featured three times as much wrestling as all seven matches of WWE’s Queen’s Crown Tournament last month.
WWE’s inaugural Queen’s Crown Tournament came under fire for its lack of ring time among women wrestlers. The shortest match of the tournament saw Shayna Baszler defeat Dana Brooke in a matter of seconds, 85 seconds to be exact. The Queen’s Crown tournament featured a total of 21 minutes and 15 seconds of ring time, while AEW’s TBS Championship Tournament has already amassed a whopping 61 minutes of ring time after the same amount of matches. The median match time for a Queen’s Crown match was 2:45, compared to 9:47 for the AEW TBS Tournament, which continues tonight on AEW Dynamite with a quarterfinals match between Kris Statlander and Ruby Soho.
AEW TBS Championship Tournament Match Times
- Total Ring Time: 61 minutes
- Median Match Time: 9:47
- Longest Match: 11:27 (Hikaru Shida vs. Nyla Rose)
- Shortest Match: 3:31 (The Bunny vs. Red Velvet)
WWE Queen’s Crown Tournament Match Times
- Total Ring Time: 21 minutes, 15 seconds
- Median Match Time: 2:45
- Longest Match: 5:55 (Zelina Vega vs. Doudrop)
- Shortest Match: 1:25 (Dana Brooke vs. Shayna Baszler)
In an article dubbed “WWE’s Queen’s Crown Tournament has been Alarmingly Short,” Connor Casey of Comicbook.com wrote “Unfortunately, the tournament has been met with heavy criticism from fans online, though none of the frustration has been directed at the wrestlers themselves. Rather, fans are upset at just how little time has been dedicated to the tournament with each match being noticeably short.”
To his point, fans weighed in online with their contempt for the well-meaning tournament, calling WWE out for the lack of ring time in its female equivalent to King of the Ring.
“The WWE Queen’s Crown tournament was a huge disappointment. I’ve always wanted a Queen of the Ring tournament for the women but that was just rushed and embarrassing,” wrote one fan.
“This is how much WWE cares about the Queen's Crown tournament,” wrote another fan who listed match times of the tournament through October 11, which ranged from 1:24 to 2:14. These listed match times did omit a three-minute match between Natalya and Doudrop on the October 11 broadcast of Raw, though this hardly helps WWE’s case.
Queen’s Crown finalist Doudrop, who wrestled the longest match of the tournament (5:55) against Zelina Vega in Saudi Arabia, came to the defense of the short match times.
“I like to think that they were just little tasters. Because a lot of these matches were matches that hadn’t happened before, so you don’t want to give everything away right now,” said Doudrop in an interview with GiveMeSport (h/t The Sportster).
Doudrop added levity to her analysis as she described wrestling in intense heat in Saudi Arabia.
“I was wrestling in 90-degree heat. I can only do that for a very limited amount of time... If it went a bit longer, I don’t think there would have been much makeup or anything left of me.”
Though this tale of two tournaments suggests AEW does a better job booking women, that is not the case at all. In fact, part of the disappointment with the series of enhancement matches that was the Queen’s Crown tournament is WWE’s proven ability to consistently create top female stars at the level of their male counterparts. Bianca Belair, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, Bayley and Becky Lynch have all ascended to the top of the WWE roster as some of the biggest stars in the company. WWE simply didn’t give the same attention to its midcard women. This has also been the case with male midcarders in WWE whose characters and storylines often lack the depth and consistency of a Roman Reigns, Drew McIntyre or Bobby Lashley.
While AEW has successfully built Britt Baker into a main event star, women main eventers are few and far between in the the company. Stars like Thunder Rosa, Jade Cargill, Nyla Rose and Hikaru Shida have all the potential in the world to reach the level of stardom of a Britt Baker, however they tend to get cycled out as casualties of AEW’s limited television time. After appearing in the women’s Casino Battle at AEW All Out, Shida was not featured on television for another month. After a show-stealing Triple Threat match against Jade Cargill and Nyla Rose on the September 29 broadcast of Rampage, Thunder Rosa disappeared from AEW television for over a month as well.
It sounds like consistency has been a bugaboo in both women’s divisions, with WWE lacking the ring time while AEW lacks the follow-through.
