Finngall

Indeed, I repeatedly point out to my non-wrestling-fan friends that regardless of what they think of it and in spite of its scripted nature, it's still real people doing some pretty crazy s*** in the ring, some of it highly athletic, for the sake of entertaining a crowd.

Greetings. I found myself going down a rabbit hole and am looking for help to satisfy my curiosity. Last night I had NHK World on in the background and what happened to be on was Part Two of a feature on "Future Princes of Dance", spotlighting top members of the most recent graduating class of one of Russia's premier ballet academies. One of these was Aaron Osawa-Horowitz (the only Japan connection among the dancers), who eventually was hired by the prestigious Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg. I did a little bit of Google searching on him, which probably wouldn't have lasted very long except that I stumbled upon a site for his mother Chikako Osawa-Horowitz (大澤史來), who is a photojournalist in London. Here she mentions that both her father and uncle were "professional" rikishi, with her uncle being a "Champion" and her father having received the Order of the Sacred Treasure from Emperor Hirohito. As "Champion" could mean as little as a Jonokuchi yusho, that's not necessarily meaningful, but I assume that getting a medal, however minor, means that the father achieved something of note in the sport. But the queries on sumodb don't appear to allow a search on real names, and my Google searches haven't been fruitful. May I enlist the assistance of the community? Thank you very much.

I guess my take on the whole thing can be summed up from a piece of a (US) commercial featuring a rapid-fire recounting of a woman's bad first dates, one of which was: Ditto for "e-sports". I'm not going to loudly declare that they are sports, but if people are tuning in to watch and companies think it's worth their money to sponsor participants and advertise to the viewers, (shrug) I'm not going to argue that they're not.

You better you bet.

Daniel Austin (aka Don Roid) isn't a member here AFAIK, but he's an occasional contributor over on Sumotalk and periodically features sumo on his podcast, where he's interviewed Mike and others of the ST crew along with Moti, Osunaarashi, Byamba, and others.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but: I need England to lose in 90 minutes and break his chain right there to take it to PKs. I can't score any more goals beyond the 3 slot because either a) Switzerland wins or draws and breaks my chain in the 4 slot or b) Switzerland loses, breaking my chain at #5 regardless of the ENG-COL result due to it being my (R) team. If his chain doesn't break at 3, I give up a goal at slot 4 if Switzerland wins, at slot 6 if Sweden wins, or in both slots in case of a draw.

Other eliminated C/R teams are still listed.

Need to scratch Senegal and Panama.

The nightmare scenario I feared has come to pass, but I don't regret my picks. Onward to the consolation rounds....

Please confirm? Thanks.

Does being an "Inactive member" have something to do with it?

Confirmed, and choices submitted.

Is it too late to join the party?

"If you're going through hell, keep going."