Yumiko Hotta

Yumiko Hotta (堀田 祐美子, Hotta Yumiko; born January 10, 1967) is a Japanese professional wrestler and mixed martial artist. Hotta was trained by and started her career in the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW) promotion in June 1985. She worked for the promotion until 2003, becoming a three-time WWWA World Single and WWWA World Tag Team Champion. In June 2003, Hotta took over the Hyper Visual Fighting Arsion promotion and renamed it Major Girl's Fighting AtoZ. Under Hotta's leadership, the promotion lasted only three years, before folding in 2006, after which Hotta became a freelancer. In January 2011, Hotta joined the new Universal Woman's Pro Wrestling Reina promotion, but just sixteen months later she announced that the promotion was folding. Afterwards, she affiliated herself with the World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana promotion, becoming the leader of the villainous Bousou-gun stable. She resigned from Diana in July 2016 to once again become a freelancer. Since 1995, Hotta has also fought several mixed martial arts matches, mostly at events put together by joshi puroresu promotions.

With a sports background in karate, specifically in the Kyokushin kaikan style, Hotta was trained in professional wrestling at the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW) dojo. She was part of the 1985 AJW rookie class alongside Hisako Uno, Suzuka Minami and Mitsuko Nishiwaki. She made her debut on June 5, 1985, teaming with Megumi Nakamae in a tag team match, where they faced Fumie Kanzaki and Hisako Uno. Hotta gained attention early on for her unorthodox wrestling style. During her second year in AJW, Hotta was made the tag team partner of popular wrestler Chigusa Nagayo. On October 10, 1986, Hotta and Nagayo won the 1986 Tag League the Best tournament. She won her first title on April 15, 1987, when she and Hisako Uno defeated Judy Martin and Leilani Kai to win the vacant WWWA World Tag Team Championship. They would lose the title just twelve days later to the Red Typhoons (Kazue Nagahori and Yumi Ogura). The following year, Hotta formed the Fire Jets tag team with Mitsuko Nishiwaki and together the two went on to become two-time WWWA World Tag Team Champions during the late 80s. On September 5, 1993, Hotta and Takako Inoue defeated Akira Hokuto, the former Hisako Uno, and Suzuka Minami to win the vacant UWA World Women's Tag Team Championship, which they would hold for the next seven months. In mid-1994, Hotta won the annual Japan Grand Prix.

Hotta won her first singles title on September 24, 1995, when she defeated Toshiyo Yamada for the All Pacific Championship. She vacated the title in mid-1996 to concentrate on chasing AJW's top singles title, the WWWA World Single Championship, as well as an upcoming vale tudo fight. Having established herself in legit competition, Hotta was on August 20, 1997, booked to defeat Kyoko Inoue at the Nippon Budokan for the WWWA World Single Championship. During the next two years, Hotta went on to win the title two more times. In the late 90s, AJW began having financial issues, which led to a mass exodus of talent from the promotion; Hotta, however, remained loyal to the promotion, becoming a locker room leader of sorts. However, on May 11, 2003, Hotta announced that she also was quitting the dying promotion.

After leaving AJW, Hotta joined the Hyper Visual Fighting Arsion, being joined by fellow AJW workers Mika Nishio and Mima Shimoda and former AJW trainees Chiemi Kitakami and Sachie Abe. On June 24, Hotta became the president of Arsion and changed the promotion's name to Major Girl's Fighting AtoZ. On February 15, 2004, Hotta defeated Momoe Nakanishi to become the second AtoZ World Champion. She held the title until May 4, 2006, when AtoZ went out of business.

Following the folding of AtoZ, Hotta began working as a freelancer on the Japanese independent circuit. She made her debut for Ice Ribbon on February 2, 2007, wrestling Hikari Minami to a draw, for NEO Japan Ladies Pro Wrestling on April 2, teaming with Misae Genki to defeat Etsuko Mita and Yoshiko Tamura in a tag team main event, and on October 21, 2007, entered Oz Academy's tournament to determine the number one contender to the promotion's Openweight Championship, from which she was eliminated in the second round on November 23 by Carlos Amano. Hotta also made appearances for Pro Wrestling Sun, under the ring name "KY Hotta".

On July 21, 2008, Hotta made an appearance for JWP Joshi Puroresu, when she and Manami Toyota entered a tournament to determine the inaugural Daily Sports Women's Tag Team Champions, defeating Chikayo Nagashima and Sonoko Kato in their first round match. On August 3, they were defeated in the finals of the tournament by Harukura (Kayoko Haruyama and Tsubasa Kuragaki). On September 23, Hotta also unsuccessfully challenged Haruyama for the JWP Openweight Championship. At the end of the year, the match was named JWP's Match of the Year. On January 25, 2009, Hotta and Keito defeated Uematsu☆Ran (Ran Yu-Yu and Toshie Uematsu) to win the Daily Sports Women's and JWP Tag Team Championships. After a successful title defense against Arisa Nakajima and Toujyuki Leon on February 21, Hotta and Keito lost the titles to Command Bolshoi and Megumi Yabushita in their second defense on April 12.

In 2009, Hotta joined Nanae Takahashi's Passion Red stable, adopting the ring name "Passion Hotty" in the process. She would mainly represent the stable in JWP and Passion Red's self-produced independent events. Passion Red held its final event on November 27, 2010, after which the stable folded.

In early 2011, Hotta joined the newly formed Universal Woman's Pro Wrestling Reina promotion, which had a working relationship with the Mexican Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) promotion. After several small pre-events, the promotion held its first official event on May 8, where Hotta and Manami Toyota defeated Hailey Hatred and Zeuxis in a tag team match. At the second event seven days later, Hotta and Zeuxis defeated Silueta and Tomoka Nakagawa in a tag team main event. During the third event on May 28, Hotta announced that she had injured the meniscus in her knee and would undergo surgery the following month, forcing her to take a break from in-ring action.