Cancer amputee takes aim at black belt

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This article was published 19/11/2022 (1147 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two years after losing his left arm to cancer, a Winnipeg man is attempting to fulfill the goal he set through surgery and rehabilitation: get his black belt in karate.

Warren Hotomani, 42, will step onto a mat today to see if he can pass the martial art’s necessary grading.

“When I was in the hospital bed, I was planning what I wanted to be doing,” Hotomani said in an interview. “I’m not going to be lazy — I’m still going to practice karate.

“I don’t have two arms, but I can still do it.”

Alan Taylor, Hotomani’s instructor (or sensei) at the Y-Not? Inner City Karate Program at the University of Winnipeg, said his student’s grading will be at the same standard as any other black belt candidate.

“No one will just give him the black belt because of his arm,” Taylor said. “If anything, he will have to adapt to it… If he was attacked on the street, he would have to defend himself as best he can.

“He’s not getting a bye or a free pass.”

Brian MacKinnon, who runs the free karate classes through the charitable Y-Not? Anti-Poverty program, said he was an English and Canadian studies teacher at R.B. Russell Vocational High School years ago when he first met Hotomani and began teaching him karate at the Winnipeg school.

Now, not only Hotomani is in the program MacKinnon founded, but five of his eight children and his wife are enrolled in the program, too.

“It’s an honour and privilege to provide a free of charge karate program for this family,” MacKinnon said.

“Warren’s motto, ‘Get knocked down seven times, get up eight times’, will be printed in Japanese on his black belt, should he be successfully graded.”

Hotomani was born with neurofibromatosis, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, is a genetic disorder which causes tumours to form on nerve tissue. Some of his children have also been diagnosed with it.

“I call it my curse,” he said.

Hotomani said most tumours caused by the disorder are non-cancerous, and he has had several removed through the years. But that wasn’t the case with one found under his left arm in 2019. The arm was amputated in 2020.

“My chances were very slim,” he said. “They suggested radiation and I thought it wouldn’t work. It didn’t. And then they suggested amputation, and I thought that was the way to go. It was a huge decision but I didn’t want to leave my children without a father.

“I figured I made a sacrifice for something.”

While recovering, Hotomani decided to go back to karate. He had continued after high school — even getting his brown belt — but working various shifts made it hard to get to training classes, so he quit the martial art.

Fast-forward several years and, when his former high school teacher began the free program in 2016, Hotomani took up karate again, intending to finally get his black belt.

Then, came his cancer diagnosis.

Hotomani looks at his drive for a black belt as having gone over a speed bump instead of into a road block.

“You’re never too old to start karate and you can still do karate if you have a disability,” he said. “Karate is life.”

As for Hotomani’s chances for success today, he feels “pretty calm.

“I will go out there and do my absolute best… It doesn’t matter how many times you fail, just pick yourself up and keep going,” he said. “The only way you fail is if you quit.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca