 In May 2019, Xu defeated another martial artist; but was only able to do so wearing clown makeup to hide his face and by fighting under a pseudonym.It took him 36 hours to reach the fight location due to his low social credit score, and Chinese search engines reportedly had stopped listing him.Later that year, Xu had to wear Peking Opera face paint and cover his back tattoo during his match with Japanese kickboxer Yuichiro Nagashima so that the fight which took place in Japan could stream in China.