Archive for the ‘Sumo’ Category

More tags that I do not get to use often enough.

Wednesday, February 28th, 2024

Even better, this is sort of a Texas story.

For decades, countless articles and videos using similar verbiage have boasted of their creators gaining unprecedented access to sumo. What follows is inevitably a mishmash of cliche, misinformation, outdated statistics and the all-too-common confusing of amateur sumo with professional.
The reality is that ōzumo, for all its pageantry and uniqueness, is actually one of the most open and accessible top-level professional sports in the world, particularly for amateur athletes from overseas.

Summary: guy up in Dallas runs a sumo club, club holds first tournament successfully, everyone celebrates and places long distance call. Lots of great stories start out this way.

“We got drunk in celebration and made a drunken Instagram call to Gaga (former maegashira Gagamaru). He was with someone who spoke English and we were like ‘You should come our next tournament! We’ll have you as a guest’ and he was like “Yes I’m down. Let’s do it!’”

It happened.

“We hung out with him for a week in Dallas, took him all over the place, and he helped us train, and did a group session with all the people who flew in for the tournament,” Morrison says.

And one thing led to another.

Emboldened by that positive experience, and their growing friendship with Gagamaru, Morrison and Sauer decided to make a sumo-centric visit to Tokyo this month to coincide with the retirement ceremony of another Georgian rikishi — Tochinoshin.
With little more than a “why not” attitude and a handful of social media connections, the Texan managed to have a deeper and more all-encompassing sumo experience over the course of two weeks than most do in a lifetime.
Morrison also took advantage of former Texan rikishi Wakaichiro’s coincidental visit to the capital by tagging along to watch training at Ikazuchi stable. Morrison was delighted when the stablemaster — who had extensive experience in amateur and international sumo — agreed to let him join practice.
“I barely even have time to stretch and, before I know it, my first bout is against Ikazuchido, who I’ve rooted for on TV and I’m like ‘what the hell is happening.’ It was surreal.

Further sessions with rikishi from Oshima and Asakayama stables left Morrison in plenty of pain but floating on air.

The whole story reminds me of “Genghis Blues“, except with sumo instead of Tuvan throat singing. Brings a smile to my face, it does.

Obit watch: May 14, 2018.

Monday, May 14th, 2018

This is a placeholder for Margot Kidder obits: once they start going up, I’ll add them here.

In the meantime:

Chuck Knox, noted NFL coach.

Ernest Medina, one of the central figures in the My Lai massacre.

Captain Medina went on trial in September 1971, defended by the prominent criminal lawyer F. Lee Bailey, as well as a military lawyer. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter of at least 100 civilians, the murder of a woman and two counts of assault against a prisoner by firing twice over his head to frighten him the night after the massacre.
The defense contended that Captain Medina was unaware of large-scale killings of defenseless civilians until they had already occurred. The prosecution argued that the defense account was not credible since Captain Medina had been in continual radio contact with his platoons. The court-martial panel of five combat officers returned not guilty verdicts on all counts after an hour’s deliberation.

Doreen Simmons.

“Who?”

She was born in England, studied theology and classics at the University of Cambridge, and taught school in Singapore.

She was best known as an English-language sumo commentator for NHK from 1992 until March of this year.

“At the beginning, there were three play-by-play men who had experience of broadcasting games like baseball, but their knowledge of basic sumo was newly acquired and pretty limited,” she said in an interview last year with The Daily Express, a British newspaper. “They wanted the color provided by commentators like me who were hired because we were already knowledgeable about some aspect of sumo.”

Obit watch: January 23, 2013.

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Taiho.

Who?

Taiho, “widely considered the greatest sumo wrestler of postwar Japan despite the fact that he weighed scarcely more than 300 pounds”.

Taiho, who made his debut in the mid-1950s, dominated his sport until the early ’70s. Standing about 6 feet 1 and weighing about 220 pounds at the start of his career, he was a sylph of sumo, relying on skill more than heft to win matches.

His career record was 746-144-136, and he won the Emperor’s Cup (“an immense silver trophy awarded to the champion of sumo’s top division”) 32 times.

And one more gratuitous note: Taiho was born on Sakhalin Island during World War II. After the war ended and the Soviet Union took control of Sakhalin, Taiho and his mother were sent to Hokkaido.

His father, an anti-Communist who had fled his homeland for Sakhalin after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, was apparently arrested. The family never learned his fate; years later, touring the Soviet Union as a sumo star, Taiho reportedly sought his father’s whereabouts to no avail.

Remember, folks: Commies aren’t cool.

Academic update: Fall 2011, part 2.

Monday, December 12th, 2011

This is a little early, since the final grade hasn’t been put into the main university system yet. (Edited to add 12/13: it is there now.) But I’ve been in touch with my “20th Century: Triumph and Tragedy” professor by email, and she’s confirmed the grades posted in the university’s BlackBoard system.

And…?

(more…)

Fat bottomed guys make the rotten world go round.

Monday, July 5th, 2010

There’s a very brief article in this morning’s NYT about Japan’s sumo scandal.

One wrestler (Keiji Tamiya, who wrestled under the name Kotomitsuki) has been banned for life because he bet on baseball games, and apparently paid $35,000 in blackmail money to a gangster.

A coach, Tadashige Naya, was also banned; if I understand the NYT article correctly, he was a coach in the same stable as Kotomitsuki, and was also involved in gambling.

The NYT article is frustratingly short; it alludes to other scandals involving drugs and rigged matches, and mentions an issue with sales of front-row seats to gangsters, but doesn’t go into much detail. Google turned up a CSM article from late last week that goes into a bit more detail about the current scandals and some of the past ones. There’s also a WSJ article from a few weeks ago that covers some of the same ground. I vaguely recall reading something about the Asashoryu scandal, but I must have been distracted by shiny objects at the time.

Question for my readers: is anyone aware of a good English-language source for sumo coverage and information?