Reonito

I've never considered that they might not promote someone who's earned it just because it creates a hard-to-fill opening; my assumption is that they start from the top and then deal with "holes" in the banzuke as they get to them. I feel like this is the only real counterexample we've seen recently, but it went in the other direction, with multiple guys getting promoted to sanyaku who normally wouldn't be just to relieve the logjam below (it's also by far my worst GTB score, since I refused to go with that option).

That would be ... surprising (and I don't mean just because of the rank and record).

Different groups of oyakata. I'm not sure whether there's an overlap and how much. I think "the judging department" or "shimpan" is who makes the banzuke, and I'm not sure what the term is for the torikumi duties. I'm generally not very up on how oyakata duties work, so I'm sure someone more informed will chime in and correct me.

Scandal!

It's not like Miyanokaze is an established juryo vet, but maybe just crossing the sekitori threshold once counts for something...

Ah, I see. Like, will Miyanokaze and Kotokuzan perform similarly in Nagoya?

@Asashosakari did an analysis for J <-> Ms and we thought we understood the pattern; not exchanging Kyokukaiyu and Miyanokaze (just barely) breaks it.

Somewhat ironically, Kyokukaiyu would have made it if Miyanokaze won his final bout.

He can certainly feel hard done by, and Miyanokaze is a very lucky boy. I guess we have an example in which the tie went to the incumbent.

If you click on that link for Atami, you can see why he generated such high expectations.

He's still only 22, over 2 years younger than Onosato, so maybe someone will get through to him yet

Seems like "currently" might be the key here, I bet some of them (Akebono, for one) had much lower scores at the time of their promotion. In fact, if I did the query correctly, Akebono won by oshidashi 55 times before he became yokozuna, and only 26 by yorikiri. After his promotion, the numbers were 101 and 128, so he went from 2.1X more oshidashi to 1.3X more yorikiri.

Honestly, Sunday looked like a clear matta to me, and he certainly seemed to think so, though somebody mentioned he may have sprained his ankle Saturday. And hopefully the surgery fixed the shoulder; it seems like it was the elbow giving him trouble this basho.

Much less one who is toast as soon as his belt is touched [cough] Takakeisho [cough]

That top 3!

Yeah, I guess most recently it's Kyushu 2022 vs. Kyushu 2023...

Of course, the sample size on these is tiny, as he's only lost 34 times in his 9 Makuuchi basho! BTW, for a "non-belt" guy, he has 56 wins by oshidashi and 36 by yorikiri. For comparison, our prime current oshi practitioner, Daieisho, has 230 oshidashi wins to 27 yorikiri ones. For Hoshoryu, it's 73 yorikiri to 42 oshidashi. So I'd say Onosato has a pretty balanced game that leans oshi and will probably evolve toward more yotsu over time.

As far as I can from the translation tools, no outstanding performance prize. Kanto-sho to the winner of Aonishiki-Sadanoumi and to Asakoryu with a win; gino-sho to Kirishima and Wakatakakage. https://x.com/sumokyokai/status/1926488540805792133

I'm prepared to wait a little longer before calling their ceiling. Even Atamifuji is young enough that there's a chance that he'll eventually live up to the very high expectations with which he came in. But obviously, everyone is free to set their expectations as they see fit.

Of his 9 losses, 7 were to sanyaku opponents, of whom only Takayasu didn't have a winning record, and most had double-digit wins. The other losses were Abi and Oho, who also knocked off the yokozuna. Sure, we'd expect him to win some of these in a typical basho, but losing all of them is less of a disaster than it looks from the 6-9 record.

I can see not giving him a prize two times in a row for the same achievement, but failing to give him one he could have gotten doesn't seem like a good reason not to give him another shot next time.

We don't think Onosato leapfrogs Hoshoryu for Y1e, right? And Kotozakura on the east side and WTK on the west? There are some older banzuke where the S2 is on the east, balance be damned.

I mean, they've done wacky stuff before, I hope not, but it'll be an interesting data point.

In, and hoping for a kinder roll of the dice next time. I'll even take someone I can actually cheer for, even if they don't do well.

Natsu 2025 is only the 11th time in the six-basho era that everyone ranked M1-M5 finished with a losing record, and the first since Hatsu 1995 (and maybe the 4th ever?) that didn't involve any kyujo.