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Yumiko Hotta


Grimmas

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  • 2 months later...

Over the next few days I'm going to aim to leave substantive comments in all of the threads on Joshi workers sans perhaps a couple I didn't get to. I have decided to start with Hotta both because she has the least discussion surrounding her, and because she is a case where my own views seem to be at odds with people who are much more favorable to Joshi than I have been over the last ten years or so.

 

First things first. I am not certain I will rank Hotta. That said, she is definitely on my "bubble" for consideration, and would safely make a top 150 if this project were extending that deep. More than that, I would rank Hotta above most of her peers, and find her to be considerably better than many of the most cherished Joshi workers. As a result if I end up leaving Hotta off it will also mean the list of Joshi talents to appear on my ballot won't be particularly long. I can't name 10 who I think are better than Hotta, and peak performance v. peak performance, perhaps not even 5.

 

In the last few days I've had conversations about Hotta with a few different people because I have been somewhat mystified as to why she is regarded as a poor worker by some, and seemingly no better than pretty good by many Joshi fans. The criticisms of her seem to boil down to the following:

 

Unprofessionalism - Here it is argued that Hotta was dangerously stiff and uncooperative in the ring. The Plum Mariko match was cited to me twice from two different sources, though it should be noted that one of the people who cited it scoffed at the notion that it was a particularly meaningful incident.

 

Poor selling - This is not unrelated to the first criticism as it seems that many people regard her as someone who not only sold poorly, but also did so as an expression of her unprofessionalism.

 

Terrible post-prime - Here the argument is not only that Hotta was bad past her peak, but that she has stuck around way too long, and thus what limited good she did is negated by a far larger run of being quite bad.

 

I'm not sure whether or not I agree with the first criticism, but I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter much to me at all one way or the other. I will say that I didn't think the Mariko match was particularly brutal, and I find Kansai and even Kong to be every bit as recklessly stiff as Hotta can be at times. Furthermore I wouldn't necessarily view Maeda's unprofessionalism as a disqualifier, and I don't think I've seen anyone invoke it against Andre's candidacy. I simply haven't seen Hotta matches that ran off the rails because of this alleged trait, I don't find her to be uniquely violent even relative to her peers, and it's not a criticism I can honestly see myself applying to others even if I believed it. So I'm largely unmoved by it.

 

On the selling front, not only do I not think she's bad at it, I think she's better at it than the vast, vast majority of Joshi workers. I'm not going to say she's an all time great seller - she isn't. I'm not sure any Joshi worker is, and the few that I would rank as especially good will almost assuredly make my ballot. But for someone with a gimmick of being badass, kickboxerish, tough woman, she sells over the long haul of a match, and singular shots very well. I think her selling v. Kong, Kansai, and even Hokuto, is better than what I've seen out of most women in high level singles matches from that era. She's also shown more willingness to at least illustrate that a limb has been damaged than virtually any other Joshi worker I can think of outside of Hokuto. I honestly don't see any evidence that she sells poorly, and think it's an especially odd criticism to make of her given the general selling weaknesses that plague the Joshi scene.

 

As for her post-prime, I saw very little of it and she is bad. I can't and won't defend it. But I would say that I think Kansai is a bad worker post-prime as well, and furthermore there aren't very many Joshi workers that have long runs of goodness, let alone greatness. I think everyone that does, sans maybe one, will end up on my ballot.

 

I've alluded to some of what I see as her strengths above, but I do want to get into it a bit more. Here are her key strengths as I see them.

 

Very good tag worker - I actually think a lot of the Joshi talent from her era were stronger tag performers than singles workers, but Hotta is definitely above the mean. Strong in this context both cutting off spots, delivering her own big spots, and even taking a beating when the match called for it.

 

Unique presence - Hotta is Meada-ish not just with the kicks, but also in that she does have the feel of something different than other talents. The obvious comparison is Kansai (and I'll make that later), but she feels distinct to me and the crowd seemed to buy into her as a "business is picking up" type of badass which adds to her matches.

 

Offense - Kicks, forearms, slaps, suplexes, nasty powerbombs, et. She is a dominant offensive force which fits her character and it feels different than what you see from most of the other Joshi workers of the period.

 

Selling - I addressed it above and I see it as a clear positive for her.

 

Very strong singles peak performances - Her bouts v. Nakano, Asuka, Kansai, Hokuto, and Kong were all pretty different from each other, and all pretty damn great. In none of those matches did I feel like she was the lesser performer, and I'd put these five matches up against the best five matches of any other Joshi worker, especially if we are talking a top five against different opponents (not sure I'd rate her at the level of them all, but the point is I don't think they would look unreasonable next to the top fives of other greats). The Yamada match I saw is not quite at the level of those five, but isn't terribly far off, and was another really strong singles match performance.*

 

Above Tim says Kansai is right there as a way of dismissing Hotta. While the stylistic similarity is evident, I don't think it's immediately obvious that Kansai is better than Hotta. I loved Kansai years ago, but rewatching all this footage over the last couple of weeks, it took me longer to get back into it, where Hotta grabbed me immediately. Perhaps this was selection bias, but it's true nonetheless.

 

I think Kansai had a tendency to work slow building singles matches at times which is jarring within the context of Joshi (I'll talk more about this when I get to her thread), whereas Hotta seemed more likely to lead strong, and if she went to the "laying around in holds" spots it came later in the match and felt a bit more purposeful to me at least on the surface. Kansai was a great tag worker, where Hotta was very good maybe borderline great, and I did soften a bit on my initial "holy fuck Hotta rules" the more I watched, whereas my opinion of Kansai went up the more I watched. Still I'd be hard pressed to say that I thought Kansai was a clearly better, even if I might be slightly more inclined to include her than Hotta.

 

I've seen pretty good matches with Hotta as early as 90, and great matches every year from 91-95. From what I saw I thought she was an especially strong worker in 93/94, but it's hard to say how much of that is just what's easily available. We are too late in the process for me to dig into the late 90s and see what's there, and I know that she wasn't any good in recent years when she popped up. That said I do think she was a great wrestler at her peak, and regardless of what others think of her or what her reputation is, I can't easily dismiss her. She's way too good for that.

 

*These were by no means the only singles matches of hers I watched.

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It's nice to get a fair and detailed write up on Hotta, excellent post Dylan.

 

I'm not sure she'll make my hundred but I've always liked her, I'll give her a rewatch if I get the time.

 

I can see the argument for unprofessionalism. She was probably more consistently reckless with her kicks than other joshi workers of her era although she's not especially unique or terrible. When you see them AJW training videos or see a young Satomura punting a trainees face off to teach her 'fire', when you consider the nature of Japanese wrestling in general - I find it hard to be outraged. And yes, it does factor into her aura, and part of the fun with Hotta matches is seeing how her opponents deal with her assault.

 

I think there's a couple of reasons people target Hotta. 1. She wasn't a pushed as a main eventer, so there's a sense of "who is she to do that to . . ." 2. She, ummm, was a butch looking girl in a midcard full of smaller, often pretty workers. I'm sure I don't have to open that can to show where I'm going with that.

 

In the other thread I flippantly put Hotta over Kong, and while I'd have to think about that, I know who I'd rather watch.

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That is a great post indeed. However, some of these things stand out to me:

On the selling front, not only do I not think she's bad at it, I think she's better at it than the vast, vast majority of Joshi workers. I'm not going to say she's an all time great seller - she isn't. I'm not sure any Joshi worker is, and the few that I would rank as especially good will almost assuredly make my ballot. But for someone with a gimmick of being badass, kickboxerish, tough woman, she sells over the long haul of a match, and singular shots very well. I think her selling v. Kong, Kansai, and even Hokuto, is better than what I've seen out of most women in high level singles matches from that era. She's also shown more willingness to at least illustrate that a limb has been damaged than virtually any other Joshi worker I can think of outside of Hokuto. I honestly don't see any evidence that she sells poorly, and think it's an especially odd criticism to make of her given the general selling weaknesses that plague the Joshi scene.

Unique presence - Hotta is Meada-ish not just with the kicks, but also in that she does have the feel of something different than other talents. The obvious comparison is Kansai (and I'll make that later), but she feels distinct to me and the crowd seemed to buy into her as a "business is picking up" type of badass which adds to her matches.

 

Offense - Kicks, forearms, slaps, suplexes, nasty powerbombs, et. She is a dominant offensive force which fits her character and it feels different than what you see from most of the other Joshi workers of the period.

 

 

Not to dismiss the observations, because there are some excellent points there, but I wonder if this stuff stands out to someone watching a ton of joshi in a short time, like Dylan apparently did. Especially the selling bit and the comparison to other workers.

 

I remember first going through the joshi, Hotta was someone who sparked my interest. I was more interested in shootstyle and stiff wrestling, so Hotta seemed to fit the bill. Going through her stuff at the time she was very underwhelming and at best a fun crowbar. As a worker she is very far from the Daisuke Ikedas, or even the Katsumi Usudas or Koji Kanemotos of this world.

 

From my experience, this is Hotta's typical modus operandi:

 

1) Recklessly kick opponent to a pulp

2) Sit in a half crab to kill time

3) Throw assorted modified powerbombs and cross-armed germans, often recklessly dropping opponent on their heads in the process

 

1) can be pretty fun against an opponent who is able to keep it interesting. 2) is necessary when she is up against a not so skillful worker and pretty much exposes her limitations. May be edited out by a good opponent. 3) can be fun to a degree, but after a while I find myself losing interest in the back and forth-bomb trading.

 

As far as matches go, I guess me and Dylan have very different tastes when it comes to joshi. The Asuka - fake MMA match I find to be an atrocious mess. The Kansai match is cool because they kick eachother in the face, but there's fuck all transitions or rhyme or reason in it. Hokuto match is held together by Hokuto's selling and general Hokuto-ness, but I wasn't too hot on that match in total.

 

The best match I've seen Hotta in is the Toyota match from 1995. And good god I'm not a fan of Toyota at all but that bout is a testament to her greatness. Going back to the Sabu comparison, I love Sabu but no way could I imagine Sabu performing like that. Hotta does her usual shit as described above. It makes for a pretty great match, but it's all in her opponent. Otherwise it would have just been the average Hotta match.

 

As far as the selling goes, and her "willingness to illustrate..." I dunno if it really makes such a difference. I did some Hotta YouTube searches today, found a match vs. Aja (not the bloody hand match) where Aja trashes her leg for 15 minutes. Hotta is good selling the beating, but after her comeback she ignores it in order to do 1) and 3). Then found a match vs. Etsuko Mita. In that Mita gets put through 1), then tries to do some leg work, which Hotta ignores and does 2), then Mita locks in a Figure 4, which Hotta laughes off, then Mita locks in a shoot submission(?), emphasizing that she is applying maximum pressure to Hotta's leg, to which Hotta responds by lying on the mat for a while. Then Hotta does the "illustrating that a limb has been damaged" bit before proceeding right back to 1) and then 3).

 

Kansai match also has this bit where Kansai does some piledrivers and a sleeper. Hotta then does this "dizzy head" sell with flailing arms for about 2 seconds between hitting moves. I'm not sure if this is really the sign of somebody who's a superior worker.

 

On the more positive side, looking back at Hotta I've discovered that I think she has pretty good fire. Something I didn't notice the first time around.

 

So there's that. I've dismissed Hotta, so I felt compelled to write this post. As far as crowbars go, I'd probably rank her below Masashi Aoyagi, Kazunari Murakami, Ryuji Walter and others. Just too undynamic. As far as 1993 AJW workers go, I'd probably have her below Bolshoi Kid.

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I think there's a couple of reasons people target Hotta. 1. She wasn't a pushed as a main eventer, so there's a sense of "who is she to do that to . . ." 2. She, ummm, was a butch looking girl in a midcard full of smaller, often pretty workers. I'm sure I don't have to open that can to show where I'm going with that.

 

Absolutely.

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While I don't really agree with a lot of the particulars in Jetlag's post I do think there is something to his argument that my appraisal of Hotta is related to binge watching her and really a ton of Joshi in a small span of time.

 

I put off Joshi forever and wasn't really sure I'd get to it. It's a style of wrestling I haven't much cared for since at least 2006, even if I have enjoyed the hell out of Satomura, Kana, and at times Hamada in the last decade or so. I basically forced myself to watch it after many aborted attempts and ended up watching a ton of stuff in a short period of time. Because of that the first impression of Hotta may have hit me harder than it otherwise would have if I was watching things in a more linear way and/or if I was watching things slowly as they unfolded. More importantly when thinking about Hotta I have really only compared her to other Joshi wrestlers for the most part, which is why I can't be certain that I'd rate her.

 

I think the selling discussion is especially specific to Joshi and "the willingness to illustrate" line was framed that way for a reason - it's the best you can hope for with Joshi I'm afraid. I actually had the specific Mita match in mind when I used that language and while I might quibble a bit with Jetlag's description it is reasonably accurate. That said, in the well over a hundred Joshi matches I watched in the last two weeks, that is one of a handful of instances where I can recall even getting that much. You can argue it's bad selling relative to the rest of the wrestling universe, and I might even buy that, but when the knock on Hotta is her selling and she's a Joshi worker there is something pretty amusing about the fact that she's one of maybe two or three people I've seen sell long form limb work AT ALL in a Joshi match. Someone like Chigusa Nagayo, who is an exceptionally sympathetic babyface and a strong talent in her own way, couldn't be bothered to even register damage to her leg at all in the vaunted 87 match with Asuka, so dinging Hotta for selling rings hollow to me.

 

I think the general match layout pointed to is funny, because you could literally say the exact same thing of Kansai, though she tends to do the laying in a half crab mat on the front end of her matches not even bothering to do anything to get you interested in the match in the first place. Or at least that is a narrative of her match structure you could easily construct if you wanted to.

 

Anyway Joshi remains tough for me, because I don't believe all styles are created equal, and there are major issues I have with Joshi in general (selling being the number one issue, but transitions would be another), but after watching a ton of it in a short span of time I sort of agree with OJ's implied stance that you can find greatness in it if you really immerse yourself in it. I don't really feel comfortable grading anyone on a curve though and that does create problems for what to do with a lot of people including even someone like Satomura who I know Jetlag likes (as do I) but who I think has a skill set that is wildly exaggerated because of the universe she operates in.

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That was an interesting defense of Hotta. I'm not sure how much I can agree with it in good faith, but then I'd have to watch some Hotta matches to be sure. I don't think Hotta being butch has much to do with anything. Hotta's reputation was always that she was selfish and unprofessional and seemingly thought a lot more of her abilities than hardcore fans did. People just didn't think she was that good and maybe there was some group-think in that much like opinions of Kandori or Bolshi Kid, but it was in comparison to workers with similar gimmicks such as Kansai, Aja, Kandori (once her rep improved), and Chigusa, Omori and Asuka once the 80s UWF boom started rubbing off on them. Dylan mentioned that she stood out from other women, but it always seemed to me that she was lost in the shuffle. The Matsunagas pretty much gave everybody a turn in terms of pushes, and she remained loyal to them and vice versa, but I don't think she was ever one of the bigger stars, and I'd pin that on a lack of charisma as much as ring work. She generally slot into a gatekeeper role prior to the big exodus, and was fairly good at that in tags. The Hotta/Takako tag team was really good from memory and there's no way anyone could accuse Hotta of stunting Takako's growth during the time they tagged together. Quite the opposite in fact.

 

One thing that instantly sticks out is that Dylan is write about the matwork in everybody's bouts as well as the commitment to long-term selling. I'm not a fan of the submission work that fills up the first third of Joshi matches. I understand the psychology behind it (kind of), but Hotta's work would have to be pretty bad to be any less of an offender than Kansai or anybody else.

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Unprofessionalism - Here it is argued that Hotta was dangerously stiff and uncooperative in the ring. The Plum Mariko match was cited to me twice from two different sources, though it should be noted that one of the people who cited it scoffed at the notion that it was a particularly meaningful incident.

 

Poor selling - This is not unrelated to the first criticism as it seems that many people regard her as someone who not only sold poorly, but also did so as an expression of her unprofessionalism.

 

To me, both of these tie into a issue with Hotta's attitude in her approach to who she was working with. The '93 GP Finals is a clear example of this, in the semi-final against Harley Saito Hotta doesn't make any of effort to make any of Saito's offense come off as dangerous to her. At the finish Saito is throwing out a variety of suplexes for near falls to which Hotta sells them like they were simple rollups. Compare that to her performance in the final and there is a noticeable difference. She just has this high-school like quality as to when she deems her opponent worthy of her putting in any effort. No matter how many quality performances that I watch from her that belief is always going to eat away at my opinion of her.

 

As to the Plum match, I cited it as an example of what I just stated. I should have given a better explanation as I didn't intend for it to come off as "This is the match that killed Plum Mariko!"

 

In terms of being unique, I don't think that wrong, I just think that quite a few of her peers where more unique and certainly more memorable ways. Hotta's gimmick wasn't all that different from several similar gimmicks in men's promotions from around that time.

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I think there's a couple of reasons people target Hotta. 1. She wasn't a pushed as a main eventer, so there's a sense of "who is she to do that to . . ." 2. She, ummm, was a butch looking girl in a midcard full of smaller, often pretty workers. I'm sure I don't have to open that can to show where I'm going with that.

 

Absolutely.

 

 

I was going to make a comparison of Kana with Hotta/Kansai but why bother if people read it then think, "He just likes her more because she has nice tits!"

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, I watched Kansai vs. Hotta for the express purpose of deciding who was the better worker in *that match (not overall), and I think it was pretty clearly Kansai. The match itself is not that long, but it builds to a decisive finish and you get to see both women on offence and defence. Kansai is so much more expressive, which makes her offence more interesting and her selling better. Hotta tries to sell in the bout, but she's not very good at it and the best you can really say is that she tried. Kansai had a few awkward moments, particularly on transitions, but she came across as a much more dynamic performer who knew how to sell better than Hotta even if it was face to canvas stuff. But y'know, face to canvas is a better way to sell than back to canvas if you can't make awesome facial expressions. Kansai didn't really sell beating the count in a great way, but it was effective enough, and she was just more engaging all match long.

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  • 6 years later...

I like Hotta but she seems to lack some kind of charisma or presence that the obvious people to compare her to have (Dynamite Kansai & Toshiyo Yamada). It is cool that she has the hand match with Kong to show that she’s good in a kind of underdog position and not just as someone who brutalises people.

What I watched for this so far and my match ratings
Yumiko Hotta & Takako Inoue vs Dynamite Kansai & Mayumi Ozaki (15/01/93) ***¾
Yumiko Hotta vs Dynamite Kansai (02/04/93) ***
Yumiko Hotta vs Aja Kong (24/01/94) ****
Yumiko Hotta vs Lioness Asuka (26/03/95) ***¼
Yumiko Hotta vs Manami Toyota (03/09/95) ****

 

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On 3/16/2016 at 5:16 PM, Jetlag said:

...

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever written. I mean, I still stand by much of it, but I've come way around on Hotta. When she's on she's become one of my favourite workers and I don't care anymore how stupid or dangerous she is. I'm not sure if there's enough to justify her on a Top 100 considering she still has some stinkers and from what I've seen her 2000s stuff is atrocious. Still, I love me a good senseless Hotta match.

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