Sumo Wrestling - My Latest Totally Normal Interest
I started watching Sumo in November. I'd seen it on TV when I was visiting Japan a few years ago and didn't think too much of it then, but as someone with a vague interest in spectating various forms of wrestling I was always vulnerable to mild obsession like this, should it become easy for me to access.
Anyway as it turns out, NHK (the Japanese national broadcaster) posts highlights of the top division matches on YouTube every day, removing them when the next two-monthly* tournament starts.
So I tuned into the November tournament, got entirely hooked on it as part of my morning routine for 2 weeks, and started clapping when a match was good. This is who I am now.
The January Basho started last weekend, and already a bunch of stories are developing that makes 2025 look like an interesting year, if possibly a transitionary year.
A little groundwork
Sumo has a bunch of rankings, from the top couple of guys all the way down to the capable amateur. For our purposes, we're only really able to talk Makuuchi, the top 42 wrestlers, who are split into two main groups - maegashira (the rank and file) and the sanyaku (the current elite, generally less than 10 guys).
| A handy ranks chart, grabbed from japandeluxtours.com
You win a bout by staying on your feet within the circle, and you lose by not staying on your feet or leaving the circle. There are intricacies beyond that, but nothing that you need to know to understand a typical bout.
The most important thing to understand is that a single tournament at makuuchi division involves all the guys doing 1 fight per day for 15 days, and the person with the best win-loss record wins the tournament. Some work is done to make sure nobody can win a tournement without facing the top ranked guys, but generally you wrestle those close to you in rank, and if you have a positive record (e.g. 9 wins 6 losses) you will probably rank up.
| The current rankings, from sumoreference - red outlines are new career high ranks
No Yokozuna
| The GOAT
The sanyaku are also split into different ranks but right now we only care about the top 2 - yokozuna and ozeki.
To work your way up the ranks in sanyaku you generally need to be more than just "not losing" - you need to be winning and looking good while you do it. Getting to ozeki typically requires a win-loss ratio of over 70% against the top of the makuuchi division for 3+ tournaments, and yokozuna requires a step above that with 80+% and also winning one of the last 3 tournaments.
Neither of these requirements are guarantees though, and the yokozuna promotion especially also requires them to get the OK from a committee who are also very concerned with how dignified a wrestler is - this can seem petty (and they absolutely have made some very dodgy calls on this in the past regarding foreign wrestlers), but yokozuna are the face of the sport so it's not entirely unreasonable.
The important part is that it's really fucking hard to get to yokozuna. There have been 42 promoted in the last hundred years, there's something of a drought going on right now. Hakuho (likely the greatest of all time) and Kakuryu both retired in 2021, leaving the newly-promoted and plagued-with-injury Terunofuji as the only yokozuna for the last 3 years.
| This is what a yokozuna's tournament record looks like
Of the 12 tournaments in 2023/24, he missed 6, retired from 3, and won the other 3 - because that's what yokozuna do, they win. He attempted to wrestle in this January Basho, but after a 2-3 record in his first 5 bouts he chose to accept the calls of his body and retire from wrestling leaving the sport without a top-ranked wrestler for the first time in over 30 years before Akebono was promoted.
This leads us to the next interesting detail.
A Japanese Yokozuna?
| The trio of Yokozuna Candidates
Akebono was Hawaiian, the first non-Japanese wrestler to be made yokozuna, and since his promotion things have been pretty bad for Japanese prospects - only 3 of the last 10 promotions have been Japanese wrestlers, and the only one of the 21st Century - Kisenosato - had a short career plagued with injuries.
Mongolia, with its rich tradition of similar wrestling, has dominated the rank since, with 5 of the last 6 promotions including the GOAT Hakuho. It's hard to feel like a country like Japan wouldn't be eager to find and promote any Japanese wrestler who seems capable of not embarrassing themselves in the role. Thankfully, that doesn't look like a problem in 2025.
There are currently 3 ozeki eyeing the possibility of promotion to the top rank -
- Kotozakura - Winner of the November 24 Basho, a 3rd generation sanyaku (grandson of the 53rd yokozuna of the same name), and the top contender as of the start of this basho. While his results in September weren't spectacular he went 14-1 in November and with a similar showing in January he had a chance to get the kind of win-loss record required to go with his tournament win. His promotion would be a great win for "traditional" sumo.
- Hoshoryu - A young Mongolian wrestler with already several years experience in makuuchi but only 1 tournement win from back in July 23. He and Kotozakura had a 13-1 final day match to decide the November tournament, and he will need a tournament win to have a chance at yokozuna promotion after the March tournament.
- ÅŒnosato - Another young wrestler who went through the fairly common modern route to pro sumo via college sumo. The press loves this kid, and with good reason - debuting in January he won the May and September basho and was promoted to ozeki for the November tournament, where he stumbled slightly but maintained a solid 9-6 record. With a 14-1 record in January it'd be very plausible for him to see an incredibly rapid yokozuna promotion.
As I'm writing this halfway through the January event, I have some knowledge of the standings, but without spoiling things too much - we aren't seeing a promotion from this basho. As things drag on and Onosato's wins move out of the 3-month range, Kotozakura's will also and that leaves only Hoshoryu with a decent shot soon, provided he can clinch one event. It's very up in the air, and I wouldn't be shocked to see a couple of promotions this year if any of these guys can string some results together at the right moment.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the wrestlers outside the sanyaku to say anything about the prospects lower down the track, but it's not looking like we have any dominant forces in the top division at the moment.
Wrap-up
I appreciate this is something of a special-interest dump with limited appeal, but if you're like me and susceptible to storylines then sumo is a very dangerous hobby. The sport has a ton of justified controversy and claims of corruption and abuse in its recent history, but the simplicity and tradition of it all is really hard to resist as a spectator. Beyond a few presentational changes, a basho looks almost identical to how it did 100 years ago, and the techniques used remain the same too. There's a magic to that.
Some recommended viewing
NHK WORLD-JAPAN - GRAND SUMO: Day 1 of the January 2025 Tournament - The start of the current basho (may be unavailable after February).
Sumostew - A Concise Guide to Terunofuji - a great video from right before Terunofuji's promotion to yokozuna, charting his incredible recovery from knee surgery and the depths of sumo.
LuckyPyjamasTV - The Pride of Yokozuna: Hakuho's Lone Battle - A reupload of a documentary by NHK, released shortly after Hakuho's final tournament win and subsequent retirement. The video that caused YouTube's algorithm to recommend me NHK highlights.
* There's just no way I can bring myself to use a word as ambiguous as "bimonthly", and I have nothing better to offer than two-monthly and twice-monthly