Eighteen minutes and four seconds: the amount of time that women wrestlers were featured in this week’s WWE Raw event at the Barclays Center.
Ten seconds: the amount of time pro wrestler Xavier Woods played his trombone, lovingly named Francesca 2.
That’s a glance at Kate Foray’s infographic of the three-hour wrestling broadcast earlier this week. It’s part of the Richmond, Va.-based graphic designer’s Raw Breakdown Project, which she has done every week since May of last year.
You can check out all her past breakdowns here.
Foray, who is currently working for the State of Virginia, started this project when she noticed how little time WWE seemed to be giving to women superstars. She started timing all the women’s wrestling matches — last month, she looked into the dedicated airtime they received over one year (4.8 percent airtime in the year before what was known as “The Divas Revolution” and 7.92 percent after it).
Now she’s gathering statistics on things like which wrestlers appear in the ring, how much time is dedicated to in-ring competition and how long the opening and closing segments are. While the timing and breaking down of all this info might seem like it detracts from the watching experience, Foray said it’s made her enjoy wrestling even more. If anything, it’s a good break from the sometimes-tedious work she does for her day job, she said.
“Designing for wrestling is literally the opposite end of the spectrum on what I do from a day to day basis,” said Foray. “It’s organized chaos. I think that’s what makes it even more fun for me, trying to organize chaos into information.”
The project has gained a following from the passionate wrestling community, to the point where she’ll receive suggestions and criticism for what to time and study next, which she’s open to.
“That’s really my job, being able to generate feelings and emotions out of people,” she said.
It makes sense then that Bayley, who made her Raw debut in Brooklyn earlier this week, is her favorite wrestler: “She just makes you feel something with her wrestling,” Foray said.
Before you go...
Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.
3 ways to support our work:- Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
- Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
- Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
Join our growing Slack community
Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!