26th Sumo World Championships 2025

[Akinomaki 41,763]

This weekend the World and Asian Sumo Championships 2025 are held in Bangkok

Schedule etc. http://ifs-sumo.org/ 

Live streams announced for https://www.youtube.com/@Thailandsumo - nothing on schedule yet

spot

from the sponsor we could guess that Hakuho for his World Sumo is involved - he posted some pics on his Instagram 

o o

[Akinomaki 41,763]

Very sumo friendly timing - the main event on day 1 of the Aki basho - only relatives of the athletes and officials will be interested

Accordingly, the sumo renmei has no mention of it on the main page https://www.nihonsumo-renmei.jp/index.html

As usual the (4th) All Japan weight division championships, on May 11th at the Yasukuni shrine, were the preliminaries for team Japan

4 Sponichi pages from the time have results  - Miwa won his weight class 3rd year in a row

o o o

o o

not complete though this time, and no photo of all the team members for the world championships yet

Last year's juniors heavy weight gold medallist Asada, now 3rd year at Wakayama Minoshima high, is again a member

he reported about this to the mayor of Arita on the 4th, he had won national tournaments in February and March to get selected 

o

and he won the Usa national select high school tournament on Sep. 7th

o o
 

Last year's topic/44022-2024-sumo-world-championships/

[Asashosakari 20,225]

As always, my interest would be higher if anyone at the IFS or the local organizers could be bothered to release a list of participants, but I guess they like it better if every wrestler stepping up to the dohyo is a surprise to the live stream viewership...

Anyway, the timetables for the two days courtesy of the IFS: Day 1 (Asian Championships, Junior Worlds, one round of the Adult Worlds Team events), Day 2 (everything else for the Adult events)

I'm sure there's a very sensible reason for tacking one half hour of the 9-hour Adult competitions onto Day 1, but I can't think of it.

If anyone wants to know more about the tournament regulations, the Hungarian org posted up the official documents a few months ago: Junior, Adult

(An exercise for the reader: Based on the costs listed in these documents, try to estimate just how much money Hakuho and Toyoda will have to shell out to get all these teams and athletes to show up at their proposed "Grand Slam" in addition to the World Championship, so that both events won't just cannibalize each other's participation numbers.)

[Asashosakari 20,225]

This will be of limited interest overall, but the German org posted up their rosters:

Junior

Girls
Lucie Fiedler (-60 kg)
Rosalie Büttner (-75 kg)
Johanna Rabl (+75 kg)

Boys
Finnley Kriegel (-80 kg)
Alexander Jack (-100 kg)
Miro Broswitz (Open)

From what I can tell based on press reports Broswitz is actually also an under-80 competitor and they're presumably bringing him along in large part to have a full complement of team competitors.

Adult

Women
Lucie Fiedler (-65 kg)
Marie-Luis Zuckschwerdt (+80 kg)

Men
Phumpaya Mazur (-85 kg)
Lorenz Moor (-100 kg)
Thomas Kriegel (-115 kg)

Looking rather thin on the women's side with two entries only because junior Fiedler is pulling double duty. No actual heavyweights among both the boys and the men, that was rather different in the glory days of German amateur sumo some 20 years ago.

Edited September 10 by Asashosakari

[Gaijingai 1,647]

Women’s Participation 

https://apnews.com/article/womens-sumo-japan-d36548ced370605ce697b9e6473094c3#

[Asashosakari 20,225]

Livestream links have been posted. Embedding has been disabled by the Thai org, so click through to Youtube.

Saturday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3TltCQvgIk

Sunday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc9GUHerEn0

[Yarimotsu 639]

On the livestream so far, I am pretty much certain it is the Asian championships but labelled as the World championships on the graphics.

It would be easy to write all the names and individual bout results but I'll leave that to someone who cares more. Some of the rounds are round robin instead of brackets due to numbers, and I lost track of which.

Women's Lightweight final: Japan wins over Taiwan

Men's Lightweight final: Japan wins over Mongolia

Women's Middleweight, round robin no final: Japan wins over Taiwan

Men's Middleweight final: Mongolia wins over Japan

Women's Light-heavyweight final: Japan wins over Taiwan

Men's Light-heavyweight final: Japan wins over Mongolia

Women's Heavyweight round robin no final: Japan wins over Kyrgyzstan. Taiwan fell and injured her knee in her first bout against Thailand and issued forfeits to all other competitors.

Men's Heavyweight final: Japan wins over Thailand. Mongolia was Bronze having only lost to Japan. Iran was cautioned for shouting in celebration on the dohyo against Taiwan, then limped off the dohyo having had his leg under Taiwan as he fell.

Women's Openweight round robin: Japan wins over Taiwan. Bronze Mongolia. Kyrgyzstan visibly a little concussed / clutching back of her head after failing to brace at all when Japan laid her on her back.

Men's Openweight final: Japan wins over Kyrgyzstan. Mongolia shared Bronze having only lost to Japan. Taiwan was unable to compete (not sure why) and issued forfeits. 

That's all I'm watching for now, team comp next.

Edited September 13 by Yarimotsu

[Asashosakari 20,225]

Today's livestream recording has not stayed available, though it's a different error message than the usual "this video is private" or a straight-up deletion, so maaaybe it'll re-appear eventually. Did I see that right from scrubbing through it (while it was still up) that the Asian Championships overran their three-hour window by a full two hours?

And the Junior Worlds must have run long too - the whole day was intended to be 9 and a half hours, but Youtube keeps a maximum of 12 hours for rewinding while a stream is active and the recording was missing the start of the dohyo action when the day concluded, so they must have gone 12+. I could be mistaken, but it looked like they even switched around the last couple of parts of the schedule, doing the adult team bouts before they brought back the juniors for their medal ceremonies at the very end, around 9pm local. That sure worked out great to squeeze everyone into the day's proceedings...

Well, let's hope Day 2 manages to stay within its intended parameters.

Edit: The video is indeed back up, now with a displayed length of 11h 55m...including one hour of dead air at the start but seemingly missing quite a bit of the action at the end (three junior weight class finals, the adult teams stuff, and the medals). Uh...let's hope that still gets fixed.

Edit more: After googling around for what Youtube does with livestreams >12 hours, I suspect the missing content - about 1.5 to 2 hours - might be lost entirely unless the IFS / local organizers actually recorded it themselves and can re-upload it. 

Edited September 13 by Asashosakari

[Akinomaki 41,763]

Sponichi only has the late pics of the whole teams for all result reports, Asian and juniors

oo     o o

At the Asian championships, the son of Kaiho (still wrong real name romaji in the DB), Nichidai 2nd year Kumagai failed to win his middle weight final, else Japan won all of the 5 categories each and the teams. Miwa won the light heavy weight 4th time in a row, Ikeda the open weight, Takeuchi the heavyweight and the 3 the team 3-0.

For the juniors, the boys won all 4 categories, the girls got only 2 and both teams won. Mongolia had an All Asahigaoka-high team, they lost the sf to Japan and got the bronze medal by win against Georgia. After heavy weight last year, Asada won the open weight this time.

Edited September 14 by Akinomaki

[Gaijingai 1,647]

IOC Chief Thanks Thailand 

https://www.bangkokpost.com/sports/3103926/ioc-chief-thanks-thailand-for-hosting-sumo-world-championship#google_vignette

[John Gunning 3,716]

Full medal table

[Yarimotsu 639]

Whoa, looks like Team Ukraine benefitted a huge amount from their training in Japan.

Edited September 15 by Yarimotsu

[Akinomaki 41,763]

On 05/09/2024 at 07:41, Akinomaki said:

The 2nd day with adult competition is day 1 of the basho, so there will be not much interest, neither on the forum, nor in the Japanese media (and usually the juniors get the medals)

On 09/09/2024 at 11:38, Akinomaki said:

As expected, nothing for day 2 in the Japanese media, though the team won the gold medal, the women silver and open weight gold for Ikeda.

Same again, Sponichi a day late reports from the world championships day 2

Japan yusho team photos - the juniors together

o

the women's and men's yusho team - the women after 15 years, the last time that both teams won, the men for the 3rd time in a row

o o

Hakuho presented the medals for the men's open weight - and was presented by Katrina as the IFS advisor (and 69th yokozuna)

Ikeda won the open weight again, Takeuchi the heavyweight after bronze, Miwa bronze again - a medal for the 3rd time in a row

[Akinomaki 41,763]

Not just Hakuho, also Kyokushuzan was appointed to the newly installed post of external advisor to the IFS. Baruto is already riji there, the new 2 may also be elected in the future, so far as externals they can't take part in decisions.

Others to be seen in the live streams were Kokkai and Hoshihikari

https://www.sponichi.co.jp/sports/news/2025/09/17/kiji/20250917s00005000076000c.html?page=1

Edited September 17 by Akinomaki

[Asashosakari 20,225]

Am I the only one who is nonplussed by Sponichi's claim that Baruto has (or had) an executive role in both the European and International Sumo Federations? I can't say I've ever heard about him being active above the national level in Estonia, and searching in both English and Japanese doesn't seem to bring up anything, nor can I find him in archived versions of the two orgs' websites. 

[Akinomaki 41,763]

I was a bit surprised that I hadn't read anything about a riji post for Baruto before, but I though that might have been a recent election and had not been in my sumo news.