nagora

Surely the best example is Raiden Tameemon who should have been the first Yokozuna :) Anyway, Hōshōryū has been strong for a good while and this last performance was excellent. 14-3, really. It's not a terrible choice IMO, but I hope he can live up to it. I'm expecting Kotozakura to join him before too long despite his meltdown.

If the event (literally world-wide news already) itself isn't bad enough for sumo, the sight of vultures circulating to settle personal scores will be worse for it. With 1000 rikishi in the system no sane person expects no discipline problems but this stuff is foolish. IMO, unless Hakuhou is shown have been involved, his ability to run the heya generally should be kept separate and he should be left some breathing room to take on board what amounts to a very loud warning shot across his bows.

He has had a very easy "draw" until yesterday. http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Rikishi_basho.aspx?r=12664&b=202311 Compared to, for example, Tobizaru's first week where his lowest opponent was M2: http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Rikishi_basho.aspx?r=12203&b=202311 I know that's the way it works but it does sometimes seem to give promising middle-rankers a bit of a leg up in the first week.

There's plenty of people who have something wrong with them. Giving them permission to express that wrongness to everyone in the world appears to be the entire purpose of the Internet.

I don't think we need to worry too much about that. It was weak, but I thought Atamifuji's focus was gone before the tachiai. He stumbled while doing his little ritual and seemed thrown off by the fact that an Ozeki wasn't interested in playing along to his tempo. So we reached the destination I expected, we just didn't take the scenic route.

I guess that regularly defeating the current ozeki would be one criterion, although if you're not also hitting the 11 wins average (or similar) maybe it's just a criterion for demoting the ozeki!

Clearly, a "great" ozeki is one that gains the rope. It's hard to see any argument that someone that never makes that promotion is "great" unless perhaps it's due to injury and retirement. A good ozeki is one that is generally losing only (and not always) to higher ranked opponents or the eventual Basho winner. It could certainly be argued that a strong Yokozuna can prevent an otherwise "great" ozeki from getting the final promotion, but history suggests otherwise. But, there is a subjective aspect to "great" in any sport. For some it's a numbers/stats question; for others style is an indispensable aspect and a competitor can rake in the championships and not earn respect, while others with poorer records are admired. I think for most people, there is a sweet-spot where ability and style meet to create a "great". And once comparisons are made between generations - between rikishi who never met - the subjectivity goes off the charts. Who was better? Ali or Tyson?

I agree.

There's been a noticeable tendency to push up on his chin, which I guess is easier because everyone else is starting so far below his chin and of course it makes it hard for him to see what he's doing or reach for the mawashi.

Lot of balance issues today. I'm starting to feel sorry for young Hokuseiho; he just looks gormless out there at the moment, all height and no experience. Abi seem to have completely lost his focus while Tobi seems to have found an intensity that I don't normally associate with him. I'm not saying he has lasers coming out his eyes or anything but he seems to have a bit less of the relaxed attitude. Give him a gold star - oh, that's right, they already did!

And if you want your opponent not to do foot sweeps don't do one yourself first. I've felt many times that Terunofuji's style/stance invites kicks that never come because of respect for him and his injuries. But that's not the game and his ceremony yesterday was very stiff and uncomfortable, so I doubt he would have completed the basho anyway. I don't know about Shodai. Is it possible he has a twin brother somewhere that turns up when the real one is busy doing something else?

That was my view too. Tobi still won the bout, though. I thought he was going to have a heart attack in the post-match interview. He almost looked as wobbly walking in as Teru did. Match of the Basho, I think. It'd certainly be grand if we get something better down the line! "And the crowd goes wild" :D

I guess Shodai has decided that he needs to take a run-up at the rope. A long run-up.

The Kama Sutra has an entire section about what to do in these situations (I kid you not).

That's not an upsent; Meisei was promoted far out of his depth.

The wind was from the west today.

As far as I know it's limited to users in East Asia. No use at all to people like me in the UK. As someone up-thread said: it's as if NSK doesn't want Sumo to spread. I know they may have a perception that they would have to do localisations and stuff but really, if you want to watch Sumo you'll probably not worry about the language issue at least while watching the matches themselves.

YouTube has basically no staff for this. If someone complains about copyright, then you get a strike. To reverse that you need to go beyond just saying "fair use" or even "public domain"; YT doesn't care and doesn't have time to check. By and large you need to show that the strike request was malicious and fraudulent. If it really came from someone who looks like they probably do own the copyright then as far as YT is concerned that's the end of it. YT is one of those modern Internet companies who's business model is "If we did this right/well we would go bust, so we'll do it badly and make money".

Henka are disappointing. It's as simple as that. They're not skilful and they're not entertaining in some other way, so the crowd generally is bored and fans of the loser are annoyed, only the supporters of the winner are happy (and not even all of them). So they leave at best a feeling of anti-climax and at worse an ill-defined feeling of cheating. As long as they are enforcing the "touch the ground" rule on the tachiai most of the time then it will be effective. If you go back to Chiyonofuji's day you'll see plenty of bouts where they basically start by waving at the floor and are upright from the off; there's no pretence of actually touching down.

sss

Thanks for that.

Good point. I just stumbled on the image in a Google search. It's pretty striking even if shōkkiri.

I wonder how Abi's feeling about sitting this one out now?

You need to get in touch and see how big a cut you can get out of him to stay around.

I'm not sure I accept that. It seemed overconfident to me and tried to do that old Hakuho thing of "I'll be the immovable object and you just bounce off me" but he's not Hakuho and after a few bounces Tobi worked out what was going on and laid into him. What is Japanese for "bouncy castle"?