Benevolance

I love that towel.

I was unsure I was convinced of that, but I thought on it some more and now I'm not as sure I was as wholly unconvinced as I thought I was. Hakuho *is* kind of good at sumo and Asashoryu is a bit of an egoist. And by exiting how and when he did, he can still take pot shots at Hakuho and claim he was the better sportsman on Twitter. :)

And Asa's bar fight during the honbasho was staged by ex-Takatoriki as a puro-resu stunt. :)

Fun fact one: because Kisenosato isn't a real yokozuna, since he didn't win back-to-back yusho's as declared by internet pundits, they were only able to obtain him a nerf samurai sword. Fun fact two: it's a pretty bitchin' nerf sword.

And when it was just Hak, they mostly complained that nobody was challenging him enough.

You think that's bad? With the bar obviously lowered so much by this probable Kise promotion, the entire top division is going to be ranked Yokozuna by May. Except for Tochinoshin, who'll be M4.

I don't think it's a matter of being into Kise, but acknowledging that he's done everything yokozuna-esque but win a yusho. And now that he's done that his tsuna seems inevitable. My guess is that, win-or-lose vs Hakuho, Kise gets a rope. Harumafuji and Kakuryu did much the same thing to get their promotions; both seized excellent advantage of a weak roster when the opportunity presented it. Kise's method seemed more like grinding out the top dogs until they came down to his level. Certainly the fact that Kise's the only guy at the top that isn't facing recurring injury problems is in his favour, and that's the iron man part of sumo. My mom says they care what I think.

The third loss will be a dropped mawashi.

It all depends on how you frame it. Kotoshogiku is a perennial sekiwake/komusubi talent that overcame all odds through sheer force of determination to reach the rank of Ozeki. Despite being forced to wrestle far above his actual level, he's fought tenaciously for years and ultimately broke the decade long japanese yusho drought, easing the burden for a new generation of young rikishi moving forward. When he does finally retire, he will retire having won a yusho and a long - though perhaps not highly distinguished - ozeki career.

I will remain skeptical even after he holds the cup, much like I keep checking daily to see if they've finally corrected that mistake where Goeidou got the yusho.

I'm really not sure what Sokokurai was trying to do there. Did he think he could simply out-muscle Ichinojo with some forward-moving sumo? It was a weird decision from an ambi-turner that could have circled around Ichinojo in either direction.

And the most important link: Takatoriki joins puro resu as the mad barber.

But it's a very big bag, so it's like, 10x the disappointments to be had but for the regular price of disappointment! A bargain on disappointments that can't be missed, I say!

I guess Harumafuji wants to get in on the records race, but Hak keeps making it tough. Way to carve out his own niche, though!

It's a good thing I'm not a sekitori, because I thought the tournament started NEXT Sunday. Sneaky first Sunday of the year. My guess would be 12 wins, another jun-yusho, but still not actually in the yusho race. The perfect blend of success and failure to generate pages and pages of articles in newspaper sports sections and thread after thread of pointless armchair speculation on nerdy internet forums.

There is a simple explanation. Every time Kisenosato fails a yusho run, they add one win to Kaio's record. It's intended to incentivize Kise's yusho chances with the shadowy Mongolian secret society that determines who gets to be what rank in sumo.

Maybe Shodai can get Ikioi to show him the trick of getting Hakuho to break his own toe during the match? That technique has worked 100% of the times that Ikioi has used it against Hakuho.

Ha ha. Hakuho should retire. He couldn't even clear double Kakuryu's kensho this year. And if I were him, I'd be too embarrassed to stay on and collect my $67,000 USD per basho if I were winning only two or three yusho a year. What a washed up chump!

Which is to say, if you weren't a member of the forum during the months leading up, during, and immediately following Brody's arrival and departure from sumo, then there isn't much to interest you here.

I think it's mostly because he made contact with the sumo association through contacts on this site that a lot of forum took an active interest, and that he entered sumo after winning an open weight category in North America. He had seemingly good potential (though, presumably so does everyone joining sumo), and a series of unfortunate events plagued his career from the beginning. Add into the mix the only other Canadian to join sumo ran off with his translator to take up puroresu, and this is the very stuff of internet drama but with added pseudo-personal familiarity, since Brodi's father was a (brief) member on the forum.

Homarenishiki means Homarefuji in Canadian, so you can all surely understand why that one is so confusing.

Gaga has in fact commented on that before, pointing out that he was Gaga before she was Gaga.

I'm really don't see a lot of pressure on the yokozunae in the near future. None of the young guys so far have been able to turn in convincing, consecutive performances in the meat grinder. Goeidou and the Geek are realistically ranked above their actual level and mostly struggle to hold onto their rank, and Terunofuji is so banged up I'm not sure he'll ever wrestle to his potential. Kise is the only credible threat, and he's only been that for about a year now. Kakuryu manages to be in the yusho race once every four basho, Harumafuji every three basho, and I haven't heard the YDC complaining overly much about it. If Hakuho is only winning one or two tournaments a year, do people really think he should retire?

Give him time. I suspect he's working on that record next.

I am happy that Goeidou restored my faith in his abilities.