10 Insane Things WWE Stopped Wrestlers From Doing

9. Xia Li Was Pulled From A Kickboxing Tournament

One of the main reasons Xia Li looks like a total badass, is because she is a total badass.

Away from the squared circle, Li has a background in a wide array of martial arts. In addition to competing in wushu tournament, Xia founded her own fitness studio and spent her pre-WWE days specialising in kicking people in the face really, really hard.

Back in October of last year, it came as a shock to see the star announced to compete at a kickboxing event in Orlando, Florida. After all, WWE allowing a talent to have legitimate fights while under the company's employ is something rarely heard of.

Promoted by Combat Night, under her real name of Xia Zhao, Li was advertised to face Anna Houstel in a kickboxing match. Well, that was until WWE management found out.

The reason this fight had been allowed to come together up until this point, was simply because Xia Li had not mentioned the contest to WWE. Once they found out about the fight, they promptly pulled Li from the show.

From WWE's point of view, it makes minimal sense to allow one of your contracted talent to compete in an event where they could get seriously injured. From Xia Li's stance, she sought out this fight because she wasn't being used on NXT TV at the time.

Andrew Pollard

Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.

See more from Andrew