RabidJohn

Exactly my thoughts. First time I've seen an ozeki win by special dispensation to the gyoji. Bugger me, though, it was egregious! You could see on his face that he knew he'd screwed up. As proof of my lack of prophetic power, I did not see him going out as early as day 3. Now is he out, or out out? --- Had to laugh at Kotoshoho trying to out-balance Ura of all people. Never gonna work. Abi reminded me of the Tasmanian Devil today: a blur with arms and legs sticking out at all angles. I was impressed with Hiradoumi's bend-like-a-reed-in-the-wind strategy.

Takakeisho is a nutter, both literally and figuratively. He led with his head at least three times against Oho, which is something he absolutely should not be doing with his neck. Seems desperate. I'm pleasantly clueless as to where the basho will go. I enjoy it when Terunofuji sits out. While he's not as dominant as his predecessors, he has a good hit rate only entering when he believes he can win, so not having him around is a nice cat's-away situation. After yesterday's fumble, Kototsubaka got the yumitori-shiki spot on today. Must be nerve-wracking when you're not an old hand like Satonofuji.

That 6th loss feels inevitable, doesn't it? I believe it will depend on how it happens. If he goes 0-6 then, yeah, immediate kyujo followed by intai announcement, but it it doesn't come until the middle of next week and he's going to KK, I think he'll finish the basho first. But that's also me hoping he's going to be sensible about it. He's made a career out of defying expectations, so...

Oh, my memory! I even posted in the thread...

Something like Fat Bastard at the end of Goldmember I should imagine. Edit: No longer being able to embed images is no fun!

For Nagoya the new Inosuke was still Yodo (complete with orange sanyaku rosettes and tassles), both on the picture banzuke and the dohyo. In fact I'm slightly disappointed we haven't had a thread about it - this is the first I've heard of his promotion. In double fact, I'm just assuming it's Yodo...

Current rijicho Hakkaku retired from the dohyo at 28 years and 10 months. It seems even younger considering average sekitori career longevity has increased quite a bit in the last 30-odd years.

Oh man, I hope Tobizaru did a proper model strut down the catwalk, because them boys really are having a laugh. That's all the off-cuts they had lying around the machine shop, stitched together randomly, and slung on to a rikishi. I bet he can't put it on the same way twice!

That doesn't sound like Takakeisho, though. He's made a very successful career out of exceeding the bounds of what his body allows. It's why he's a former ozeki with four yusho to his name, and why he's in the state he's in.

Good to see he's not going into it blind. We Brits don't have the best track record in ozumo, so I hope he can turn that around. If nothing else I'd love to hear what Japanese sounds like with a Hull accent*, so a makuuchi KK would be great. *I worked most of my life for a family from Hull. It's one of the funniest English accents around. I assume there's an interview coming, John. Have fun transcribing the words of someone who curls herm on his murbahl fern!

That's just gatekeeping. Who decides who the 'right' kind of fan is? Damage? Hmm, the teams' values have risen by an order of magnitude, making it way harder to get in. I suppose that's a negative for Andretti and co... Race attendance has rocketed, so simple rules of supply and demand have put the ticket prices up. That's not great, but it's not damage - and race meets have far more going on than they used to. Some are starting to resemble festivals now. There's arguably better value for money. F1 has a massively increased presence on social media. Hordes of twitterati and redditors going at each other over teams, drivers, sponsors, FOM, the FIA and a bundle of conspiracy theories. Damaging to the sport? I honestly don't believe so, but I'm open to being proven wrong. "No publicity is bad publicity" is my take. And the current season is the best in over a decade IMO. Four different teams and seven different drivers taking wins in the first half of the season is very healthy competition. --- All that said, unless the NSK changes its tune and decides it wants to make ozumo available to international audiences, any sort of 'Netflix doc' would be pointless.

Maybe because Asahifuji was a drop-out who started in maezumo. That's the first I've heard of Midorifuji and Nishikifuji being considered collegiate. They shouldn't be, purely for consistency's sake, as they're also drop-outs who started in maezumo. Miyabiyama was a drop-out, too, but he joined ozumo promptly enough for his amateur titles to qualify for Ms60TD, so he's a fair target. Also fair targets are those like Enho and Shodai, who actually graduated before starting in maezumo.

I was an unashamed Mitakeumi fan, but I don't recall ever getting that carried away! Whenever I even wondered if he could go so far, I remembered that he's an ex-collegiate MSTD, and they just don't... I was an unashamed Asanoyama fan, too, and I believed he could get the rope. Wajima's Jinx operated in a wacky way there, but it worked. Getting really OT now, but I'm waiting to see how Onosato falls victim... I hope he eventually reveals what actually went wrong.

I know what you mean. Goeido went up in my estimations simply because of the way he called time on his career. Oddly, though, I don't mind Mitakeumi and Shodai hanging around.

That's a few months earlier than I expected (i.e. it would be announced to take effect from Hatsu 2025). I started watching sumo again in November 2015, so this'll be the first time I've seen two since 1992. I wonder if we'll see two again before Aki 2026.