Reonito

Is that in the spirit of "this is what I'd do if I were making the banzuke" or because there's precedent? I can't remember the last time an incumbent who was not demotable by the numbers got pushed down, so I am not sure what that takes.

A period reminder that banzuke placement is relative, not absolute. A promotable record in Juryo is neither necessary nor sufficient for promotion. The db is down atm so I won't give examples, but rikishi regularly get pulled up to Makuuchi despite not having the numbers when there are too many top-division wrestlers who must go down, and even more regularly get left out despite being promotable when there are not enough open slots and/or others have even stronger promotion cases. Mitoryu isn't relevant here—it's the fact that we have 6 promotable rikishi and only 4 definite demotions. Only one promotion slot was open, and 12-3 J6 Mitoryu wasn't going to pass 10-5 J1e Yutakayama or force down 7-8 M16 Chiyonokuni.

Well, I remember watching that happen in real time in 2018, so it wasn't a surprise

To me, the only real surprise in these results is Harumafuji, though I guess that can be chalked up to the "Hakuho effect."

My curiosity got the better of me. Of the 11 Yokozuna who debuted since 1990, seven would have been promoted again by winning back-to-back yusho. Hakuho did it a whopping 21 times (counting overlapping yusho pairs as separate instances), Asashoryu 12, Takanohana 7, Akebono and Musashimaru twice, and Kakuryu and Terunofuji (so far) once. Asahifuji, Wakanohana, Harumafuji, and (obviously) Kisenosato never managed it. If we count "close" as 12+ wins in back-to-back basho, we get Hakuho 44 times, Takanohana 19, Asashoryu 16, Akebono 12, Musashimaru 6. These are clearly the recent standouts. Harumafuji gets on the board with 2 instances, and Asahifuji with one.

I don't think I've ever seen him henka, might be a good curveball to keep opponents guessing.

I mean, if YY is the only criterion, then there is no "close"—you either met it or you didn't. But then you have no useful way of distinguishing those Ozeki who on multiple occasions might have earned promotion with another win or two from those who were never in striking distance, which was my intention here, in a thread devoted to measuring the quality of Ozeki who never became Yokozuna. I'll just leave it here.

Not at all! Sort of like asking how often an Ozeki made another run that would have gotten them promoted.

If you look, most of these involved a yusho, a playoff, or at least a jun-yusho. I said "close", not necessarily an actual promotion case.

Going by career-high rank, I count 5 yokozuna and 4 ozeki on his fight card. And his only loss was to Aminishiki.

Here's another measure of Ozeki quality. How often (if ever) did they come close to Yokozuna promotion? I'm doing this manually, so only covering 1990 (when promotion standards got tightened up after the Futahaguro debacle) to the present. Somewhat arbitrarily, I've defined "close" as 24+ wins over two basho, with at least 11 wins in each. The results are: Musashimaru 10 (succeeded on #10) Takanohana 8 (succeeded on #8) Kisenosato 5 (succeeded on #5) Konishiki 5 Takanonami 5 Wakanohana 5 (succeeded on #5) Hakuho 2 (succeeded on #2) Kaio 2 Terunofuji 2 (succeeded on #2) Succeeded on the first instance: Akebono, Asahifuji, Asashoryu, Harumafuji, Kakuryu Came close once: Baruto, Chiyotaikai, Tochiazuma, Takayasu, Takakeisho Other Ozeki over this time period never really troubled the YDC and the judging department.

I'm finding it mathematically surprising that ozeki win % against ozeki isn't 50% ... but I guess that's ozeki who don't go on to become yokozuna losing to those who do?

Isn't this basically based on an off-hand comment by Harumafuji?

Late to this, but might be informative to break out performance vs Y and vs O separately rather than lumping them. The win rates seem surprisingly low, and my guess is that this is explained by the "dominant Yokozuna" effect.

yes please

This is pretty much exactly what Terunofuji did in his comeback: if we count Ms10 as basho number 1, he became Yokozuna in the 11th basho. 1 Ms, 2 J, 2 M, 3 K/S, 2 O. The absolute minimum probably could have been two basho quicker, if he'd gone 15-0 at J13 instead of 13-2, and if his basho at M1 had been stronger than 8-5-2. It's theoretically possible to spend only 4 basho before reaching juryo by going 28-0, though nobody's managed it, Jokoryu coming the closest.

Hmm, no mention of the most recent set of identical twins in sumo. I sincerely hope it goes much better this time.

And since, remarkably, both M1's went 11-4, the 8-7 K1w even got leapfrogged for the K1e slot by M1w.

We don't even know whether under the recent way of doing things, an 8-7 M1e would get an extra slot if a regular one wasn't available. It's a somewhat different situation, but there have been cases when a KK J1e didn't get promoted.

Surprising error in this one: "Sitting alongside 202 cm tall Sadogatake (formerly Kotooshu)..."

Well, for the sake of argument, both Kiribayama and Takanosho had ranks and performances that could count as the first basho of a run if they were in san'yaku next tournament, but not if they're M1. Several modern runs (most recently Tochinoshin's) have started from the M1-M4 ranks, but all entail spending the second and third basho in san'yaku.

I'd say he counts as a forced hand in the same sense that a komusubi with 11+ wins forces open an extra sekiwake slot if needed. We have precedents which show that in the current era, 9 wins from M1w isn't enough to open a komusubi slot, and his case showed that 13 is. We don't have any direct evidence for 10-12, and might differ in our guesses as to where the line is.

M1-M2 and M3-M4 with a komusubi case "by the numbers" who got stuck at M1 (or M2).

Have we seen any instances of the HD approach in the last 15 years where their hand wasn't forced? And yes, I know the denominator is important.

Will Asa face any Shimpan ranking penalty? Three or maybe two