Churaumi

It's more like not being able to get up at all. Wins by strikes usually come by knocking someone out cold, beating on them until they stop resisting and the referee stops it, or doing such damage that the doctor stops the fight (bad cuts, eyes swollen shut, etc.) It's not unusual for top fighters to fight through broken facial bones and crushed noses. And yet, they still have better ring injury protocols than sumo does. They just hardly ever use them.

Great to hear that, anything close?

Wouldn't be unusual for them to end in -kiku or -giku as grammatically relevant, oyokata tend to take part of their shikona to name their wrestlers. Koto is taken and -sho- is pretty general.

The SumoDB has the owner of Kiriyama as Kurosegawa, who's in his 70s. That can't be right, can it? There are a couple other superannuated owners, those have to be anomalous too?

He burned a lot of respect from me after pulling off the henka in the playoff with Atamifuji and then talking about aiming for yokozuna. Still, it's not mine to gatekeep and I have to show respect to anyone that can claw their way up to the top and stay there. He did earn a little respect back from me by pulling the plug before the banzuke is made for November, freeing up a spot in makuuchi. I don't blame guys that need the time to figure out the next thing, but it's not great when someone with a kabu lined up does it.

I have grown up watching football and played it in school, and been a fan for decades, but this conversation makes me appreciate the simplicity of sumo.

I'm willing to give Takakeisho a pass on calling the oyakata. If his back is messed up, he's better off not shuffling around to meet in person, although roads do run both ways and he could invite the oyakata over. He's probably noble in the best place right now mentally and laying low might be a good option for him.

2nd down means you've got 3 plays to go 10 yards, 3rd down only gives 2. In the current pass-heavy offense era, 3rd down is usually going to be a passing play. Not completing the pass brings up 4th and 5 which will usually be a punt or a field goal depending on field position. So, 2nd and 10 gives offenses more options. However, defenses will usually choose to enforce penalties that cause loss of downs for exactly the same reasons. They are reducing options for defenses. They will often times decline penalties that would result in a yardage penalty but not a loss of down, especially late in the game. That's as much about clock management, especially if the defending team is behind a couple points and needs the ball back ASAP.

There's a thread on here somewhere about how much they all make, it's a couple years old but it'll give you an idea.

Good to know he has one, that will make it more tempting for him to pull the plug, having that set up for the next phase.

He doesn't need one, at least right away. Ozeki get 3 years as an oyakata before they need a kabu. He can be Takakeisho-oyakata in the meantime. Unless they've changed the rules since I last saw them.

He'll also (likely) be retiring young enough to have some good luck recuperating when he isn't at least nominally preparing for basho every couple months. He'll be better off than if he hangs on past his mid-30s, when things start slowing down.

That's a lot of look.

I think you can tell where the stables money went. Oxygen chambers and quality weights aren't cheap. It's like sumo science fiction.

We have had a glut of sanyaku lately, but that's mostly from having a string of short-term ozeki working their way back down the banzuke than anything else.