By the time Xia Zhao, known to the world as Xia Li, was throwing roundhouses in WWE and busting skulls in TNA, she’d already learned how to bleed for her dreams. Not in a poetic, “follow your bliss” kind of way. No, this was a scrape-your-knuckles-on-the-concrete, drag-your-own-coffin-up-the-hill sort of pilgrimage. A Bukowski poem in motion—less roses, more gravel. She wasn’t a wrestler from China; she was China’s first wrestling ghost, haunting a business that never knew what to do with her.
She was born in Chongqing, a city that looks like Blade Runner after a rainstorm, all neon grime and concrete ambition. There, the air tastes like industry and the sun’s a myth. Li was raised on Wushu and war stories, co-founding a fitness studio before most folks learn to parallel park. She wasn’t a child, she was a storm in training.
When WWE came knocking in 2017, they didn’t get a plucky performance center hopeful. They got a coiled spring wrapped in dragon’s breath. Her debut came in the first-ever Mae Young Classic—a first for any woman from China. They said she was green. She was. But green like an unripe grenade. She went out in the first round, sure. But she’d shown her fangs. The kind of fangs that would one day tear out the heart of expectation.
Back in NXT, she clawed through undercard purgatory like a junkyard dog gnawing on bad luck. She took her licks—losses to Mia Yim, Shayna Baszler, a feud with Aliyah that reeked of creative neglect—but she kept showing up. They say consistency is key. In wrestling, it’s more like insanity. She kept showing up to be overlooked, overused, or simply forgotten. Like a great blues singer in a pop band, you knew she had something inside her—but nobody would give her a mic that wasn’t already unplugged.
Then came Tian Sha, WWE’s best attempt at myth-making with subtitles. Xia, cloaked in darkness, reborn under Mei Ying’s guidance, became a walking revenge saga. The vignettes were fever-dream pulp—strange, violent, soaked in symbolism. It was part Kill Bill, part Mortal Kombat, and for a minute, we believed. She squashed jobbers like used beer cans and fought like she had unfinished business with God.
And yet… nothing came of it.
You see, WWE builds skyscrapers out of matchsticks. And Xia Li was a firework in a league that preferred sparklers. Drafted to SmackDown, she became the “Protector”—a character gimmick that had more branding than substance. One week she was saving Naomi, the next she vanished like spilled gin in a thunderstorm. Her main roster run was a cautionary tale in corporate mismanagement. Flashy vignettes, inconsistent booking, and opponents with the charisma of wet bread. It was like watching someone play a violin in a demolition derby.
By 2023, she was floundering. Drafted to Raw, demoted to Main Event, chasing shadows and ghosts. She challenged Becky Lynch. She got squashed. She faced Lyra Valkyria. She lost. WWE never figured out what she was—but Xia Li knew. She was a warrior. Not the kind with makeup and choreographed spots. The kind who breaks her own bones and asks for seconds.
So she left.
No press conference. No farewell match with balloons and hashtags. Just a Twitter post and the kind of silence that only means rebirth.
And that’s when she started fighting again.
She reemerged on the indie circuit like a wolf in exile. West Coast Pro. Tokyo Joshi Pro. A woman named Xia Zhao started walking the earth like Caine in Kung Fu, rediscovering her venom. She fought with Aja Kong. Teamed with Mizuki. Faced Nagisa Nozaki to a double count-out—two warriors too stubborn to die, too proud to fall.
Then came the rebirth in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, under a name that cracked like thunder: Léi Yǐng Lee. Not a gimmick. A battle cry.
She debuted with vengeance on her breath, defeating Hyan and announcing, without subtlety, that this was her playground now. She wasn’t here to be misunderstood. She wasn’t here to protect. She was here to hurt.
In TNA, she found something close to purpose. Matches with Rosemary. A war with Savannah Evans. A bloodbath with Tessa Blanchard. She lost to Masha Slamovich at Against All Odds, but there was something in her defeat that rang louder than most victories. Because when Xia Li fights now, she fights like a woman who’s been denied too many times by people who couldn’t pronounce her name.
She also took a side street into Muay Thai, because some people just don’t know how to rest. In May 2025, she beat Myriam Essalki via majority decision in an amateur bout under Combat Night MMA. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t graceful. It was a bar fight with a scoreboard. And she won.
She’s 36 now. Which in wrestling years is something like dog years plus car crashes. But she doesn’t look like she’s slowing down. She looks like she’s just started drinking from the good bottle.
Xia Li is not a Hall of Famer. She’s not a WrestleMania main event. She’s not a toy line or a t-shirt slogan. She’s a story without a narrator. A freight train that missed its station but kept moving anyway. She’s Bukowski’s kind of woman—the one who limps home at 4 a.m. with blood on her lip, a grin on her face, and a damn good reason for it.
The industry may never know what to do with her. But the ring does. The ring doesn’t need promos or approval. The ring speaks in pain and precision. And in that dialect, Xia Li is fluent.
Let the others chase belts and social media likes. Xia Li fights like she’s exorcising something. And maybe she is. Maybe we all are.
But only she does it with a spinning heel kick.