Kaoru Maeda is a Japanese retired professional wrestler better known by the ring name KAORU. Billed as the "Original Hardcore Queen", Kaoru is known for her wrestling style, which combines high-flying with hardcore wrestling. Trained by the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling (AJW) promotion, Maeda worked in both Japan and Mexico in the late 80s and early 90s, before making her breakthrough in the Gaea Japan promotion, where she most notably was a founding member of the D-Fix stable. After the folding of Gaea Japan in 2005, Maeda became a freelancer, though closely affiliating herself with the Oz Academy promotion. After returning from a three-year-long injury break in March 2014, Maeda resumed working as a freelancer, before signing with the new Marvelous promotion in January 2015.

All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling , nicknamed Zenjo was a joshi puroresu promotion established in 1968 by Takashi Matsunaga and his brothers. The group held their first card on June 4 of that year. For close to 33 years it had a TV program on Fuji TV called Women's Professional Wrestling.