She came into the business like a voice actor who took the wrong train and ended up in a bar fight — Yumiko Abe, better known to the wrestling world as Yumi Ohka. And for the better part of two decades, she didn’t just perform in the squared circle. She ruled it. Quietly. Brutally. With a grace that came not from ballet slippers, but from breaking her ACL and taping it back together with raw ambition.
Ohka didn’t flash like a supernova. She burned slow, like a cigarette forgotten on the edge of the ring — smoldering, smirking, never quite extinguished.
Born in 1979 in Koga, Ibaraki, she didn’t debut until 2001, already past the age most joshi wrestlers are contemplating retirement. She had the judo background, the pipes of a pop star, and a face made for magazine covers — which made her a perfect recruit for JDStar’s “Athtress” program. But beneath the idol gloss was a brawler waiting to be unwrapped.
She sang her own entrance music. She posed. She played the part. Then she got in the ring and got her ass kicked — again and again — until the rhythm of losing taught her how to win.
By 2003, she and her tag partner The Bloody had captured JDStar’s TWF World Tag Team titles. By 2005, she won the promotion’s prestigious Jupiter League and claimed the ace spot with a busted knee and a bruised soul. Ohka was ready to run with the flag… until she couldn’t run at all.
A torn ACL in 2005 nearly ended her. Two surgeries and almost two years on the shelf. But Ohka didn’t disappear. She lingered. She produced shows. She made appearances. She turned rehab into ritual. When JDStar went under in 2007, Ohka dusted herself off, shook off the rust, and co-founded Pro Wrestling Wave.
And from there, she built an empire.
The Architect of Wave
Pro Wrestling Wave wasn’t meant to be a vanity project. It was meant to be war — against fading interest, against the male-dominated landscape, against the very idea that joshi wrestling’s golden days were behind it. Ohka, Gami, and Tatsuya Takeshi launched Wave’s first event in 2007, with Ohka main-eventing her comeback match.
She lost. Again. But it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that she was building. Booking. Wrestling. Leading.
Ohka headlined more shows than she won. She lost to legends like Manami Toyota, Misae Genki, and Nanae Takahashi. But in losing, she became the blueprint. The standard. A ring general wrapped in gold tights and bitterness.
She won the Catch the Wave tournament in 2009, defeating Kana (who’d later become WWE’s Asuka) and Ayumi Kurihara in the same day. That win wasn’t about momentum. It was about survival. Ohka proved she was more than the house band — she was the main act, the one setting the tempo and burning the house down when necessary.
Then she got weird.
She debuted “Sakura Candle,” a masked wax-themed alter ego that dripped more than sweat — it oozed irony. Even in comedy, she was sharp. Even in gimmicks, she bled truth.
Queen of the Heels
By 2010, Ohka was done playing nice. She turned heel and lit the fuse on Black Dahlia, a faction that dressed in black and carried themselves like assassins. Alongside Bambi, Cherry, and later Misaki Ohata, she ran the division with a whip in hand and a target on her back.
She feuded with everyone: Ice Ribbon. JWP. Oz Academy. Even her own stablemates. Black Dahlia imploded in 2012, not in the ring but at the box office — losing a self-produced attendance battle to rival faction White Tails by just ten ticket stubs. Bukowski would’ve called it fate. Ohka called it fuel.
That summer, she lost a match to Kana and, in the storyline, was stripped of the right to call herself “the ace of Wave.” But like all great boxers, Ohka kept punching, title or not.
By 2013, she’d climbed back up the mountain and won the Wave Single Championship, defeating Kana in the finals of a tournament that felt less like a bracket and more like therapy. She held the title for 17 months, defending it seven times, until finally losing to Hikaru Shida in August 2014.
That reign wasn’t gold-plated legacy.
It was proof.
Proof that the girl who once sang her entrance music could now write the symphony.
The Untouchable Middle
Ohka’s career was never about meteoric rises or farewell tours. It was a middle — one long, beautiful, brutal middle. From 2015 onward, she remained the lynchpin of Wave. She captured the Catch the Wave title a second time. Held the tag titles with Shida, with Yuki Miyazaki as “Over Sun.” Lost them. Won them again. Wrestled with pride, with poise, and sometimes with painkillers. She became the first two-time Wave Single Champion by beating her old partner Misaki Ohata in December 2017.
She also wore a second hat — managing director of Zabun Co., Ltd., the company that owns Wave. She wasn’t just leading in the ring; she was steering the entire ship.
And it wasn’t just Japan.
Ohka hit U.S. soil through Shimmer Women Athletes, carving through indie darlings like Mia Yim, Athena (now AEW’s Athena), Nicole Savoy, and Makoto. She battled Sara Del Rey and Cheerleader Melissa. She made her mark in Montreal, in Chicago, in every corner where the ropes stretched and the lights buzzed.
No matter where she went, she felt like someone. Not in that shiny, Twitter-clout way. But in the “I’ve done this long enough to hurt and still care” kind of way.
The Legacy No One Talks About Enough
Yumi Ohka doesn’t need a statue.
Her legacy is written in title defenses, busted knees, and main events that nobody expected to matter — until they did. She trained under Jaguar Yokota, bled in Oz Academy, headlined Korakuen Hall, and outlasted every fad joshi wrestling threw at her.
She wrestled because she had to. Because somewhere deep down, the ring was the only place where the chaos made sense.
If you look closely, you’ll still find her there — behind the curtain, behind the desk, behind the legacy she helped shape. She’s not chasing spotlight. She is the spotlight — the one that never flickered, even when the circuit board caught fire.
Because in the world of Yumi Ohka, nothing lasts forever — except the will to fight anyway.
