Basho Talk Haru 2015

[Andreas21 190]

With Hakuhō’s win, I feel like that loss to Terunofuji was a complete waste.

If "waste" refers to "sacrifice" in the context of staged bouts, these are heavy arguments against it:

1. Hakuho had his winning streak broken

2. No play-off excitement

3. Hakuho won the Yusho anyway

4. Terunofuji still has a hard time to reach Ozeki rank next time

The whole story of orchestrated scenario is so unlikely because it works out so badly.

[ALAKTORN 346]

I wasn’t talking about staging. Can we stop talking about staging?

[Benevolance 2,511]

Is this a bad time to mention that Michael Bay signed a three-basho contract to write and direct, starting with the Natsu basho?

[Andreas21 190]

I wasn’t talking about staging. Can we stop talking about staging?

I'm awfully sorry. Yes. Now, and forever.

[Asashosakari 19,688]

Is this a bad time to mention that Michael Bay signed a three-basho contract to write and direct, starting with the Natsu basho?

That means the dohyo-matsuri will be better than the actual competition, right?

[Kasutera 258]

Is this a bad time to mention that Michael Bay signed a three-basho contract to write and direct, starting with the Natsu basho?

That means the dohyo-matsuri will be better than the actual competition, right?

He just barely beat out M. Night Shyamalan's pitch where, on Senshuraku, we discover we were all just trying to push ourselves out of the dohyo this whole time.

[r12477 2]

No, I refuse to believe that! We are witnessing the rise of the Shin-Gagamaru. His oshi will make Hakuho tremble and his mighty bellyflops will shake and shatter the dohyo under him!

He'll have a 14-1 and lose the yusho in playoffs against Terunofuji next basho, and in Nagoya he'll get a yusho and be crowned yokozuna! You'll see!

Okay, these made me laugh :-D

[yorikiried by fate 2,029]

Hell, WAY (I am going off-topic...) , but these two names next to each other conjured up South Park;

Military Leader: Those are not ideas, those are special effects.

Michael Bay: I don't see the difference.

Military Leader: I know you don't.

Military Leader: We need you, M. Night Shyamalan, to come up with ideas to stop the terrorists.

M. Night Shyamalan: What if it turns out, that they aren't terrorists, but that they are werewolves, from the future?

Military Leader: No, they are terrorists, they've been linked to Al Qaeda.

M. Night Shyamalan: But what if Al Qaeda is the group terrorized, by aliens?

Military Leader: That's not an idea, that's a twist. We need ideas.

M. Night Shyamalan: How about, that we make everyone believe that we are being terrorized, but really, we were already dead.

Edited March 23, 2015 by yorikiried by fate

[Ganzohnesushi 528]

Without saying one is harder than the other, it is safe to say that the records really are not comparable. Hakuho's 63 is the modern record, and may endure for quite some time if he is unable to break it himself.

I don't get your point here. Why do you think this not comparable? 69 consecutive wins means Futabayama has faced 69 aites in a row on the Dohyo and beat them all. No matter whether he has achieved this within 8 months or within 3 years. And mathematically the numbers (69 > 63) are easily comparable.

The only valid arguement against a comparison could be that in Futabayama's era many top division wrestlers had just gone on strike (the so-called "Shunjūen Incident").

Ganzohnesushi

[Asashosakari 19,688]

Ganzohnesusho's post reminds me I meant to respond on one aspect as well. :-)

I believe there were also more restrictions on who you were able to fight in a tournament--more than the common heya restriction of today.

Futabayama's streak happened during a short precursor period to the current scheduling system - after the aforementioned mass walk-out (4 years before the streak began), they really didn't have the depth to go on with the more restrictive system that was in use before, so they scrapped it in favour of something that's pretty much the same we have now. Sumo had recovered somewhat by 1936, but the permissive scheduling persisted until 1940*, so Futabayama faced the best-possible opponents during his run.

* By 1940 Dewanoumi-beya was again so strong that the scheduling pretty much devolved back into Dewanoumi vs. everyone else, same as it had been right before the 1932 walk-out. (Then WWII happened and the Dewanoumi dominance ended with it, although I'm not sure why the stable was so much harder hit than the rest, or even if it's connected at all.)

Edited March 24, 2015 by Asashosakari

[Morty 1,505]

Hell, WAY (I am going off-topic...) , but these two names next to each other conjured up South Park;

Military Leader: Those are not ideas, those are special effects.

Michael Bay: I don't see the difference.

Military Leader: I know you don't.

Military Leader: We need you, M. Night Shyamalan, to come up with ideas to stop the terrorists.

M. Night Shyamalan: What if it turns out, that they aren't terrorists, but that they are werewolves, from the future?

Military Leader: No, they are terrorists, they've been linked to Al Qaeda.

M. Night Shyamalan: But what if Al Qaeda is the group terrorized, by aliens?

Military Leader: That's not an idea, that's a twist. We need ideas.

M. Night Shyamalan: How about, that we make everyone believe that we are being terrorized, but really, we were already dead.

You beat me to it.

I'm now imagining Mel Gibson naked twisting his nipples, telling us why Yaocho doesn't actually happen in most bouts and how to pick it when it does

[Tsubame 368]

Good to see, that noone mentioned or considered Uwe Boll as a director for a forthcoming basho!

[Masumasumasu 902]

37:45:

http://youtu.be/stG2gd9_JUg

[Randomitsuki 2,843]

Reducing great athletes to psychopaths ranks highly among the most inane comments I've ever heard.

It would only be topped if someone dared to apply it to Hakuho only. :-)

Edited March 25, 2015 by Randomitsuki

[Masumasumasu 902]

Reducing great athletes to psychopaths ranks highly among the most inane comments I've ever heard.

It would only be topped if someone dared to apply it to Hakuho only. :-)

Many people who are truly Great at what they do are psychopaths. It's a fact. If you choose to hide your head in the sand, so be it.

I didn't say 'criminal', mind you. I said 'psychopath'. There is a difference.

I can tell you that most world class pianists are psychopathic. Why would the same not hold true for great athletic champions?

(And you didn't hear my comment, you read it.) ;)

[Randomitsuki 2,843]

Reducing great athletes to psychopaths ranks highly among the most inane comments I've ever heard.

It would only be topped if someone dared to apply it to Hakuho only. :-)

Many people who are truly Great at what they do are psychopaths. It's a fact.

No, it's just a statement, and I would love to see how you try to back up that claim.

Asides, try to find the term "psychopathy" in a classification of mental disorders (like ICD or DSM). In clinical psychology, the term isn't even used. Now THAT'S a fact.

I didn't say 'criminal', mind you. I said 'psychopath'. There is a difference.

Isn't it ironic that the term "psychopath" is not used by psychologists, but mostly by criminal investigators?

I can tell you that most world class pianists are psychopathic. Why would the same not hold true for great athletic champions?

Is this supposed to be a proper argument, or just a leading question? Why would the same not hold true for people who are more than 7 ft tall?

(And you didn't hear my comment, you read it.) ;)

The inane comment was not made by you, but by the person in that video. You are just the person who apparently believes it. :-) Edited March 25, 2015 by Randomitsuki

[Masumasumasu 902]

Reducing great athletes to psychopaths ranks highly among the most inane comments I've ever heard.

It would only be topped if someone dared to apply it to Hakuho only. :-)

Many people who are truly Great at what they do are psychopaths. It's a fact.

No, it's just a statement, and I would love to see how you try to back up that claim.

Asides, try to find the term "psychopathy" in a classification of mental disorders (like ICD or DSM). In clinical psychology, the term isn't even used. Now THAT'S a fact.

I didn't say 'criminal', mind you. I said 'psychopath'. There is a difference.

Isn't it ironic that the term "psychopath" is not used by psychologists, but mostly by criminal investigators?

I can tell you that most world class pianists are psychopathic. Why would the same not hold true for great athletic champions?

Is this supposed to be a proper argument, or just a leading question? Why would the same not hold true for people who are more than 7 ft tall?

(And you didn't hear my comment, you read it.) ;)

The inane comment was not made by you, but by the person in that video. You are just the person who apparently believes it. :-)

I disagree with you. I believe that psychopaths (sociopaths, whatever) actually exist and that their 'condition' is a huge advantage with regard to competitive and/or high-performance endeavors.

[Lost ballet fan 29]

It would also be a distinct advantage in asinine posting.

[Masumasumasu 902]

It would also be a distinct advantage in asinine posting.

Ad hominem.

[Shikona 168]

Without saying one is harder than the other, it is safe to say that the records really are not comparable. Hakuho's 63 is the modern record, and may endure for quite some time if he is unable to break it himself.

I don't get your point here. Why do you think this not comparable? 69 consecutive wins means Futabayama has faced 69 aites in a row on the Dohyo and beat them all. No matter whether he has achieved this within 8 months or within 3 years. And mathematically the numbers (69 > 63) are easily comparable.

The only valid arguement against a comparison could be that in Futabayama's era many top division wrestlers had just gone on strike (the so-called "Shunjūen Incident").

Ganzohnesushi

You see 69 and 63 and say that's close. I see 8 months and 36 months and think that's different. Advantages and disadvantages, but definitely different.

[Shikona 168]

People who start with the premise, that the best rikishi should win whenever he wants to (especially since we now have a supposedly perfect Dai-yokozuna) start data mining from within a match and with any error they then detect is supposed proof that the fix was on. Paranoia grows and grows over time and the obvious understanding of a bout becomes more and more secondary.

This. The end result of any extended yaocho speculation is always the implicit claim that a top-level rikishi (no, not just Hakuho, basically the entire makuuchi division) is just an automaton who follows perfect programming and never does anything "wrong" unless he wants to, and so the "better" rikishi should always beat the "worse" rikishi or it's evidence of a fix. As somebody said above, one wonders if people of that mindset ever actually competed in any sport above hobby level.

When you reach the point where you think that anything "good" (Terunofuji beating Hakuho, or a particularly attractive bout, etc.) is happening because it was fixed, and anything "bad" (Terunofuji losing to Kaisei) is only happening because...I dunno, because it wasn't fixed well enough, you might as well stop watching. That's like reading a book just to count up the misspelled words. Other than making yourself feel clever, what's the point?

I'm half-surprised nobody has yet suggested that Hakuho's entire recent 36-bout winning streak was engineered simply to make Terunofuji look good in ending it. (Actually, it's probably been claimed and I just haven't seen it yet...)

Feeling clever is exactly the point, I think. Now you can be the one and only person clever enough to predict the outcome of every match. Any match that doesn't go as you predicted was fixed, and you are the only one clever enough to spot the fix.

[inhashi 2,363]

Reducing great athletes to psychopaths ranks highly among the most inane comments I've ever heard.

It would only be topped if someone dared to apply it to Hakuho only. :-)

Many people who are truly Great at what they do are psychopaths. It's a fact.

No, it's just a statement, and I would love to see how you try to back up that claim.

Asides, try to find the term "psychopathy" in a classification of mental disorders (like ICD or DSM). In clinical psychology, the term isn't even used. Now THAT'S a fact.

I didn't say 'criminal', mind you. I said 'psychopath'. There is a difference.

Isn't it ironic that the term "psychopath" is not used by psychologists, but mostly by criminal investigators?

I can tell you that most world class pianists are psychopathic. Why would the same not hold true for great athletic champions?

Is this supposed to be a proper argument, or just a leading question? Why would the same not hold true for people who are more than 7 ft tall?

(And you didn't hear my comment, you read it.) ;)

The inane comment was not made by you, but by the person in that video. You are just the person who apparently believes it. :-)

I disagree with you. I believe that psychopaths (sociopaths, whatever) actually exist and that their 'condition' is a huge advantage with regard to competitive and/or high-performance endeavors.

I didn't say 'criminal', mind you. I said 'psychopath'. There is a difference.

I have to agree with Masumasumasu on this one. In many ways leadership, not necessarily evil intentions, can be tested. I'm not an expert on psychiatry or behavioral disorders, but for educational interest you can include narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Wiki it and you'd be able to compare trained behaviors expected of the 3 yokozuna. Their personalities exhibit some of the behavioral descriptions of "cunning, deception, manipulation, priority to money, power, competition, and lack of emotional expression" on/by the dohyo.

"High Machs admitted to focusing on unmitigated achievement and winning at any cost."

It can be an advantage.

[orandashoho 720]

"lack of emotional expression" is implicit in the idea that emotions should not be displayed by a Yokozuna (or any top ranked rikishi) on winning or losing -- something that Asashoryu often sinned against. While it is undoubtedly true that successful sportsmen could benefit from some psychopatic tendencies like the ability to focus and go to great lengths for personal gain, it does not follow that they are psychopaths. A certain ability to set aside emotions does help, but that doesn't mean that they do not have emotions or a ruthless disregard for other people.