How to handle injured rikishi (split from Hatsu 2024 discussion)

[Asashosakari 19,427]

11 minutes ago, maglor said:

Well Casey with his(or her) protected ranking would be allowed to enter say Wimbledon, taking away a spot from the 107th ranked player who would have ordinarily had a spot in the main draw but now doesn't.

So the equivalent of that would be to allow injured rikishi to re-enter at say Ms15e, and if you were going to be ranked there previously tough luck you are now down half a spot.

True, but tournament entry cutoffs are a constantly moving target in tennis anyway, not to mention that with wildcards and qualifying spots there are other opportunities for queue-jumping. It's a sports culture where the effects of protected/special rankings don't clash with what's generally expected.

That aside, I do agree that the effects would be relatively minimal if injured rikishi were simply re-inserted somewhere in makushita, but as mentioned before, sekitori fighting injured is mainly the result of rikishi wishing to avoid the trip to makushita at all costs to begin with, so it's questionable how much that would improve the situation.

[Asashosakari 19,427]

BTW, to get at one of the well-enumerated issues that wasn't specifically mentioned here yet: With sumo's hierarchical nature a rikishi's banzuke ranking is intensely meaningful, much more so than (most) ranking positions in other sports. From a fan's perspective it's easy to say, "just vacate the injured guy's banzuke position and put his name on an unranked injured reserve list or something", but it would take a massive change in attitudes within the sumo world to make that scenario palatable to rikishi, I reckon. And the alternative of having the injured guys just endlessly stack up at some given stoppage rank would probably make the current leadership blanch in disgust.

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,275]

6 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

The problem is that generally injured rikishi appear to have a much bigger issue with accepting the drop from juryo to makushita than the subsequent drop from makushita to jonidan or wherever. I frequently ponder the question "Wouldn't it be better if injured sekitori couldn't fall further than Ms15, or Ms60, or [insert other rank suggestion here]", but I'm honestly not sure if something like that would significantly alter their decision-making. If you made the drop-stop rank J14, it obviously would, but that idea is a non-starter for any number of reasons.

Edit: This is generally the point at which I bring out my hobby horse and mention my long-held belief that ozumo could really use a "semi-sekitori" division between juryo and makushita.

'Just' pay makushita like 15% of Juryo. It used to be possible...

[dingo 1,265]

Asashosakari's mention of how rikishi seem to have more issue with dropping to the unpaid tasks got me thinking, what if the approach would be not too keep the injured rikishi's rank but his salary? Maybe not forever to discourage sitting at the bottom for years, but let's say for a year? Of course you'd need some kind of rules so that a rikishi who made juryo for one basho wouldn't keep drawing a salary forever. The drawback is that this system would cost the Kyokai more, and their financial situation is not excellent if I'm not mistaken. 

[Chartorenji 237]

You could always just minimalize the fall? Say 2 basho and you fall, but after that you remain in purgatory. So a high ranking Makuuchi/Sanyaku can fall to late Juryo/high Makushita and make it back up quickly when they recover without ruining a year or two of their careers. 

[Leoben 143]

5 hours ago, dingo said:

Asashosakari's mention of how rikishi seem to have more issue with dropping to the unpaid tasks got me thinking, what if the approach would be not too keep the injured rikishi's rank but his salary? Maybe not forever to discourage sitting at the bottom for years, but let's say for a year? Of course you'd need some kind of rules so that a rikishi who made juryo for one basho wouldn't keep drawing a salary forever. The drawback is that this system would cost the Kyokai more, and their financial situation is not excellent if I'm not mistaken. 

You could do this in the same way unemployment insurance is accrued in many countries with social safety nets. In Spain (where I live) you accrue 50% of the time you are employed and you have to work full time for a minimum of a year to qualify. In other words, someone who becomes unemployed after working for 1 year full time is entitled to 6 months of unemployment payments. These are capped a 70% of your earnings, up to a maximum of approx. €1200-1400/month, and payments taper down progressively, so the first 2 or 3 months you receive the maximum, then you receive 60%, then 50% until the scheme runs out. 

Something like this would be relatively easy to implement. You would set a threshold that rikishi need to qualify for the scheme (4 consecutive tournaments as sekitori? a full year?) decide how they accrue time for it, and what percentage of their salary they receive. You could use an almost identical scheme as I described above, where a full year as a sekitori qualifies you for up to 6 months of injury salary protection at the lowest rate for the division where you spent the most time. And since the express purpose is to give rikishi time to recover and most injuries will take a few months at most, you could cap it at 3-6 months, starting from the moment the wrestler demotes to makushita and loses their salary.

Of course, as many have mentioned, the Kyokai's finances are what they are, so I don't see how they could afford to implement something like this.

Edited January 22, 2024 by Leoben

[Rocks 1,809]

6 hours ago, dingo said:

Asashosakari's mention of how rikishi seem to have more issue with dropping to the unpaid tasks got me thinking, what if the approach would be not too keep the injured rikishi's rank but his salary? Maybe not forever to discourage sitting at the bottom for years, but let's say for a year? Of course you'd need some kind of rules so that a rikishi who made juryo for one basho wouldn't keep drawing a salary forever. The drawback is that this system would cost the Kyokai more, and their financial situation is not excellent if I'm not mistaken. 

I think this makes the most sense. I think rikishi fear the loss of salary much more than that of rank. But a year is a bit much. An athlete facing an injury which takes a year to recover is facing a likely career ending injury. at the very lest even if they recover their chances of achieving what they would have are unlikely, Terunofuji is an exception. I would say have riksihi drop down the banzuke as usual but once they reach makushita they have 3 basho paid a juryo salary. This would give all injured riksihi pay for at least 6 months to recover. They could then reenter if healthy on the TD system. MSTD 15 coming back right 6 months after injury. . MSTD 30 for 8. MSTD 45 for 10 and MSTD 60 for12. This would also mean those going injured at the highest ranks would be paid longer which makes sense as they are the most talented and the ones the Kyokai would most want to return.  To prevent abuse like a newly promoted juryo claiming injury and paid for 6 moths I would say make qualification for this based on length in sekitori rank before fall with 3 basho competing as juryo at least prior to injury  being needed for the full 3 paid when dropping due to injury. 2 injured paid for 2 and 1 for 1. 

All of this would cost money for sure but it could be partially paid for by a portion of  the money put aside for a rikishi's intai. if a rikishi is so sure he can and wants to return from a serious injury I think they would be okay with part of that being used to help them get back.  If he's unwilling to bet on himself I don't see why the Kyokai would want to. 

[yorikiried by fate 2,028]

Wow, that's a long thread already. Building on a couple of suggestions here:

Let them drop like normal, but in the first basho after the kyujo, put them in the range of Ms1 to Ms15 for the actual torikumi making (if originally dropping from Makuuchi) or Ms16-Ms30 (if coming from Juryo). If they can KK, then treat their rank of origin for the next banzuke as Ms15 or Ms30. If they MK, calculate from their actual rank.

The pro side would be that you don't have to screw with the banzuke and instead resolve it through the torikumi. The downside would be, that such rikishi wouldn't be eligible for any division yusho in their comeback basho.

Sounds complicated maybe, but give it a flashy name and Robert's your mother's brother.

[Koorifuu 1,003]

On 22/01/2024 at 02:58, Gurowake said:

Wouldn't all that it do is take someone who is quite likely going to lose their first match and force them to go through qualifiers?  I mean, that's something, but the way I'm reading the points, you get more points for winning your qualifying bracket than for losing in the first round (30 vs 10).  I'm not sure about prize money though.

Presuming we're talking Grand Slams here, then prize money is merely about the round you get eliminated on. Unlike ranking points, there's no bonus for going through qualifying. A direct MD entrant & a qualifier who lose in the same round will earn the exact same prize money.

And yeah, there's of course exceptions i.e. up-and-comers or surface specialists, but people bordering cut-off ranks are generally expected to lose early. Especially as they've got a 1/3 chance of facing a seed (theoretically the world's best 32) in the first round.

Edited January 26, 2024 by Koorifuu

[Yamanashi 3,866]

Regarding the handling of injuries, it seems they're in an unbreakable bind, caused by

1) the binary nature of a match outcome

2) rank based on an entire career's effort to date [there's no "new season" where everyone starts out 0-0]

3) significant differences in pay between divisions [though that's true in many sports]

4) training and competition that create both "wear and tear" as well as traumatic injuries.

5) a very broad "pyramid" of players, with very few players getting good pay.

6) Heya-shmeya, Sumo is an individual sport and heya are not like "teams".

Any time spent not competing is treated as a loss, and since everyone else is in a universe with a bell curve of results centered on 3.5 or 7.5, a kyujo basho puts you at the very end of the tail.  And reward/punishment is not a linear function in the unpaid ranks, plus a kyujo 0-0-7 is usually punished more than an 0-7.

All of these factors convince a rikishi to try to soften the fall instead of quickly dropping dozens of ranks.  The Oyakata get involved in this, and the NSK is fine with ridiculous statements about medical leave ("Blobofuji has had his left arm torn off; two weeks rest and therapy are recommended.")

OK, fire away.