LLCoolKay

Very sad news to hear. I remember watching him as a kid. I remember the epic playoff bout that he and Kotokaze had and then the next basho he secured promotion to ozeki (a Chiyonofuji zensho IIRC). He may not have very frequently been in the running for the yusho but he went a long time without posting a losing record.

Is it just me or has the general level of nastiness across the various sumo communities gotten much worse than usual? It seems far beyond the usual spirited debate lately. I feel like there has been a general level of disrespect to Atamifuji for attaining such an impressive result in his second makuuchi basho. Very little acknowledgement of that at all behind the endless debate on whether Takakeisho is "worthy", whatever that really means. I was deeply impressed by his performance overall and look forward to seeing him compete in the future. Also love the super competitive scrum at the top. Every one of those guys could take it every time out. Or they could all break themselves on each other. It's exciting either way.

I loved his style since I started watching and will miss seeing him. Hopefully he lands on his feet and has a successful career outside of the sumo world.

It will be really interesting to see if he is correct about degeiko affecting or negating the advantages that top heavy heya have. That's not something I had thought about in the excitement of degeiko being back. Couple that with jungyo returning as well and I wonder if there will be major changes as talented youngsters get to take full advantage of training with the best opponents.

Thank you for putting this out there! It's great and better than most podcast/YouTube content in between bashos that gets put out there.

It sounded like he was still feeling the after effects of COVID at the start from what I recall from pre-basho talk. It might have taken until Day 5-6 for him to start getting a good nights sleep and be able to breath clearly. Would definitely explain his sudden resurgence.

They're all really good. I played Kakuryu's My Way at my Super Bowl party and my friends didn't realize for most of the song it wasn't the original.

Feeling vindicated in not assuming Hakuho held it until retirement.

Oho wins the yusho as the spirit of Taiho descends upon him and he becomes an unstoppable force of sumo.

Might not matter if he never faced whoever technically held the lineal title at the time. Thanks to the matchmaking, even going undefeated in his last basho could mean he didn't retire as the overall lineal champion. The lineal champion isn't necessarily the best wrestler/fighter/etc. It's just the man who beat the man who beat the man. Hakuho is still the GOAT though, so it doesn't matter much in his case. We all know he's The Man at the end of the day. It isn't certain though. For all we know, the lineal title holder could be way down the banzuke and never faced Hakuho in his final basho. It's unlikely, but possible. We wouldn't know for sure unless someone tracks it all the way through.

So if this is completed the way it started, we'd be able to say definitively (if we're calling the start of the first basho in the database the beginning) who the lineal champion of sumo is.

Hokuseiho J5e

Right but the way they work today is you have a record you want to claim so you call up Guiness World Records and pay a fee to get an official record keeper out to you who then checks and/or observes your record setting event. That's largely all it takes to get a record in the book.

So I wonder who paid Guiness to come out and do the records (since that's all that's really required)?

I wonder if they realize that allowing joint training will benefit Terunofuji just as much? Not that he doesn't have a number of quality training partners at home.