Gurowake

There was no further update to this for Hatsu because Wakatakakage defended it through Day 15. Well, at least that's what I can claim now.

See the below link for more information End of 2022 holder was Abi. Hatsu 2023: M3 Abi -> O Takakeisho (6) -> K Kotonowaka (11) -> S Wakatakakage (12) -> ?

I was wondering who else's was this weekend. I thought maybe no one wanted to go right after Hakuho. Just some random guy who never made sanyaku but still got to be an oyakata is a good choice.

If he was carrying any injuries, it makes sense to deal with them beforehand, because it's a major loss of time to be hampered by them once you enter. With him being able to expect a higher-than-normal entry point, he presumably didn't want to have to be like Chiyotairyu and Myogiryu and fight back from lower than he started.

Is that really Azumaryu in the Juryo torikumi? More likely to be Tohakuryu based on the banzuke.

Does "supesharu" refer to some specific kind of thing that's known as "special", like a sale at a store? I would find it odd that Japanese wouldn't have the concept of "special" at all. The first result for Googling "supesharu" doesn't seem to suggest it means anything other than "special" in general. Onrain and Hoomupeiji are at least fairly new concepts if they don't want to just calque the words into Japanese equivalents, and "onrain stoa" is a set phrase probably seen as a single word, which is why they wouldn't use a Japanese word for store after "onrain".

Intended as a repository of pointless bits of trivia I or others find, particularly while browsing the database. It happens a lot between basho. In a total of 5 basho since the 15-day era began, the last match was between two undefeated rikishi. Twice it was Taiho vs. Kashiwado, and they split the matches. All matches featured Y1e. No such match was a playoff (theoretically possible between stable members). Harumafuji is the only one to appear in such a bout that was not a Yokozuna at the time. No other Day-15 matches involving 2 14-0 rikishi have occurred. In Haru 1996, there was a 6-0 match in Jonidan on Day 15, but two other rikishi were also 7-0 from previous days. Incidentally, a few basho in each direction in that time period there were many Day-14 6-0 matches in the lower divisions, but none that basho and one on Day 15 instead. Only one Day-14 6-0 match took place outside that 1995-1996 window.

It's really impressive that I managed that then, because I rarely am able to be early with my picks, mainly only for Days 1 and 2.

Also, I doubt there are any rules set in stone for this sort of thing. They may not do the same thing now that they did with Shimoda. I think a normal Ms15 7-0 is as guaranteed as it can get by rule, and they will likely bend over backwards to make sure of those promotions, but the pairings are made such that Ms15TD is lower in rank than Ms15w, so it's reasonable to think that the promotion for Ms15TD is less automatic and more based on banzuke luck. All we really have precedent for now is that 4-3 Ms1w > 7-0 MS15TD > 5-2 Ms5e, but the former precedent is so old that it's hard to say it's necessarily still in effect.

It's somewhat like the word "re-suka-" (with - indicating long marks because I'd rather type all this out than figure out how to make them) for auto racing. It seems totally incomprehensible at first, particularly if you use a rhotic accent of English.

I really have to giggle about the "Onrain Stoa" in katakana. I have no idea how popular writing it that way is (as opposed to using a real Japanese term), but it seems really silly to me.

I went looking for videos of Ochiai's wins recently, and the first one that I found on YouTube was by That Guy (Mike) from Sumo Talk, still talking about yaocho. I looked at the description of the rest of his videos, and they're all about either yaocho or biased judging. At least basically no one's listening - 22 subs, no video over 300 views.

I remember looking at this fairly recently, and the only instance I could recall coming up with during the time I was following sumo of an overdemotion from Makuuchi that wasn't due to the landing spot of that person disappearing was: http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Banzuke.aspx?b=201501&heya=-1&shusshin=-1 8-7 J1e, 11-4 J2w, 13-2 J3e. Clearly the J1e didn't have 2 or 3 more, but he was the top ranked Juryo rikishi and had a KK. The worst one other than that was the J2w with 2 more wins than needed, plus being in the top half of that range.

Asanoyama had exactly as many wins as he needed to be promotable, not 2 or 3 more.

There's probably an even stronger argument for 5 Komusubi than there was last basho. I'm looking at the selection stats last time, and there doesn't appear to be anyone who guessed 5 or more Komusubi last basho, but that might be because the system isn't set up to show it, and I'm not going to look much further into it. If there actually were no such guesses, I almost have to think it was because most people didn't think they could make such a guess.

If you look at cases where people have been overdemoted from Makuuchi, it's solely because there was a MUCH stronger record that needed to be promoted from Juryo, as in at least 2 wins (possibly 3) more than needed to simply be promotable.

There's not going to be any inside info until after the meeting anyway.

The problem with trying to track accuracy is that a great deal of the time they're likely going to be reporting on things that are absolutely obvious. It may even be, with the low bar of journalism standards these days, the writers are coming to their own conclusions without much thought and are not consulting other people for their opinion. I wouldn't trust anyone's opinion on its own; I'd prefer to have a bunch of them to take into account.

But with 12 wins each. That's a good basis on which to start a long Yokozuna run where you don't quite have 2 yusho in a row, but 12+12 by itself is only going to get you the rope if those are both yushos, since that can't be denied (AFAIK).

Wow, I totally missed that he was only 19. That would make him the youngest MsTD so far right? Ichinojo was over 20.

I think the more important question regarding whether Tamawashi is promoted is how the precedents of promoting people work when they are forced to promote a M1e to an extra slot. We've seen a few M2s with 10 wins not reach Komusubi, but the one time that one did get an extra slot, it was when a 9-6 was promoted from M1e to another extra slot. I've viewed that as something of a degree of being fair to the other joi rikishi who might think he should be ranked above the other one that gets a free extra spot because there's no other place to promote him. While the Hokutofuji + Asanoyama extra spots are not exactly the same as the current situation as each had one more win, the relative number of wins are the same, and this time the sanyaku is smaller, which at least in my opinion should give them leeway to promote a bit more leniently. Similarly, they just promoted a 9-6 M2 last basho, and if they do so again it leaves the same number of sanyaku as before, so it would seem a bit strange to "change their mind" even though that was clearly more of an issue last time of picking which thing to do that they'd rather not do. So while I don't think that's as much of a reason to expect Tamawashi's promotion, it's something that someone might bring up at the meeting. I have a very difficult time trying to get myself away from the idea that if there's a KK M1e, any joi member with a better rank/record combination has to get promoted as well. I know that there's no reason that my exact formulation is some hard and fast rule that they go by, seeing as we don't have a ton of data points to work with, but it just makes sense to me. One thing that's leading me away from that sort of thinking though is that Asanoyama was ranked behind Hokutofuji when they both got extra spots, which seems to suggest that my condition is absolutely wrong, but then I have to explain why Asanoyama ended up promoted at all when we've seen 10-5 M2s not promoted since then on 3 occasions, and even once from M2e. There also might be a bias against 5 Komusubi, as that's never happened before. There was an instance of 5 Sekiwake, but that was caused by 2 11-4 Komusubi and 3 KK Sekiwake so there was little choice. Even if they refuse to consider 5 Komusubi, it's unclear whether they'll promote an extra Sekiwake or not promote another Komusubi. Last time they seemed to think their hands were tied in terms of the number of lower sanyaku, and avoiding 5 Komusubi might have been the reason of the Takayasu promotion to Sekiwake, but this time they could easily drop one or more of the sanyaku and not have as serious of a problem. It's certainly not obvious, which means I'm going to guess wrong because I can never get my thinking in unusual situations to align with the committee's.

Makushita joi guess: Terutsuyoshi(5-10 J10w) Ms1 Chiyosakae(5-10 J11e) Tsukahara(5-2 Ms5e) Ms2 Fujiseiun(5-2 Ms5w) Kaisho(5-10 J13w) Ms3 Tokihayate(5-2 Ms6w) Kawazoe(5-2 Ms7e) Ms4 Chiyonoumi(4-3 Ms7w) Mineyaiba(6-1 Ms17e) Ms5 Mukainakano(5-2 Ms13w) Chiyoarashi(4-3 Ms9e) Ms6 Tochikamiyama(3-4 Ms3w) Shiden(3-4 Ms4e) Ms7 Yago(4-3 Ms11e) Tochimaru(4-3 Ms11w) Ms8 Hayatefuji(6-1 Ms23e) Yuma(4-3 Ms12w) Ms9 Akiseyama(4-3 Ms13e) Ishizaki(2-5 Ms1w) Ms10 Dewanoryu(3-4 Ms6e) Shishi(5-2 Ms20e) Ms11 Hatsuyama(6-1 Ms33e) Tochiseiryu(3-4 Ms8e) Ms12 Kamito(2-5 Ms4w) Kiryuko(4-3 Ms17w) Ms13 Tanabe(3-4 Ms8w) Hitoshi(4-3 Ms18e) Ms14 Miyagi(5-2 Ms24e) Kanzaki(5-2 Ms25e) Ms15 Nishinoryu(5-2 Ms25w) Next would be Daiseiryu. Very little attention was paid to the bottom - I just threw people in whatever order.

You can't just look at the decision in a vacuum, you have to consider the context. You have to be talking about Endo, because he's the only one ranked below Asanoyama to ever get 14 wins. That same basho Endo was promoted they promoted a 9-6 from J7e. That's a whole lot weaker than anything that we have this basho. I think for that basho in today's environment they'd leave in Sokokurai instead of promoting Asahisho, but you'd still be left with promoting a 9-6 J6w because I can't see keeping anyone else.

So you think the reason they promoted Takayasu to Sekiwake this basho is solely because they wanted to give him the shot at Ozeki, and not because they thought 4+4 was neater than 3+5? Also, you might consider that Wakamotoharu now has 19 wins in two joi basho (he was #16 that competed last basho), so maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to give him a short at Ozeki next basho either with a Yusho.

When was the ceremony though?