{"id":101840,"date":"2021-10-04T21:17:02","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T01:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=101840"},"modified":"2021-10-04T21:17:02","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T01:17:02","slug":"xia-li-drafted-friday-night-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/10\/04\/xia-li-drafted-friday-night-smackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"NXT Superstar Xia Li Drafted to Friday Night SmackDown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the third round of the <strong><em>2021 WWE Draft<\/em><\/strong>&#8216;s final night, it was revealed that <strong>Xia Li<\/strong> will be making her way to <strong>Friday Night SmackDown<\/strong>. As the third name from NXT to be drafted this year &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/10\/01\/hit-row-drafted-to-smackdown\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>Hit Row<\/strong><\/a> and <strong>Austin Theory<\/strong> were called up this past Friday on SmackDown &#8211; Li&#8217;s move has had the wrestling world buzzing. Per the rules of this year&#8217;s draft, Li&#8217;s transition to SmackDown doesn&#8217;t go into effect until after <strong><em>WWE Crown Jewel<\/em><\/strong>, which is set to take place on October 21.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WWENXT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#WWENXT<\/a> standout @XiaWWE is headed to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SmackDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#SmackDown<\/a>!<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/WWEDraft?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#WWEDraft<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/um0xugjtbI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/um0xugjtbI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; WWE (@WWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE\/status\/1445193032744251399?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">October 5, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Xia Li Drafted to SmackDown<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>As the newest member of Friday Night SmackDown, Xia Li began her WWE career in early 2017. Following a successful tryout in Shanghai, China, she reported to the WWE Performance Center in Florida. From there, she made her first appearance in the augural <strong><em>Mae Young Classic<\/em><\/strong>. As the first Chinese woman to compete in a WWE ring, Li fought <strong>Mercedes Martinez<\/strong> in the first round. Despite coming up short, Li had a solid showing. She would also compete in the second-ever <strong><em>Mae Young Classic<\/em><\/strong>, which took place in 2018, making it to the second round. Li spent the lion&#8217;s share of her time in NXT, though she competed in the <strong><em>Women&#8217;s Royal Rumble<\/em><\/strong> in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Late last year, Xia Li underwent a striking character transformation. She turned heel, joining forces with <strong>Boa<\/strong> and <strong>Mei Ying<\/strong>; together, they became known as <strong>Tian Sha<\/strong>. Li&#8217;s last NXT match took place on the July 20 episode, where she was unsuccessful in defeating <strong>Raquel Gonz\u00e1lez<\/strong> for the NXT Women&#8217;s Championship.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the third round of the 2021 WWE Draft&#8216;s final night, it was revealed that Xia Li will be making her way to Friday Night SmackDown. As the third name from NXT to be drafted this year &#8211; Hit Row and Austin Theory were called up this past Friday on SmackDown &#8211; Li&#8217;s move has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3354,"featured_media":101843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2192,25,26,5,3],"tags":[3160],"class_list":["post-101840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-wrestling","category-raw","category-smackdown","category-nxt","category-wwe-universe","tag-xia-li"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}