Xia Li Was Backstage For Several Episodes Of WWE SmackDown Before Debut

WWE included a few NXT call-ups as part of this year’s edition of the Draft. This included Xia Li, as she was drafted to Friday Night SmackDown. Before that, she spent time in NXT and gained fanfare thanks to her interesting character work.

For the past few weeks, WWE had been airing several vignettes of Xia Li, familiarizing fans with her before Li makes her debut. The vignettes featured comic book style storytelling that fans certainly liked.

However, Li was not seen on WWE television apart from the vignettes. According to Fightful, Xia Li was backstage during several episodes of Friday Night Smackdown despite not debuting.

Xia Li was drafted to WWE Smackdown in October, but hasn’t appeared outside of vignettes as of yet. Xia had appeared in dark matches for the brand dating back to July, and we were told internally the plan was already in place in the Summer for her to appear on the brand. However, Xia Li still hasn’t debuted, and hasn’t worked a dark match since October 15. Despite that, we’re told that Xia Li has still been backstage at several episodes of Smackdown, definitely the October 29 episode in Pennsylvania that she didn’t wrestle on in any capacity.

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WWE rectified this situation as they officially announced that Xia Li will be making her WWE in-ring debut on next week’s episode of Friday Night Smackdown. We will have to wait and see how she will fare on the blue brand.

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