Sue

Ave, atque vale.

From the OBSC, in other words?

Wait, there's both an Omote and an Ura on the banzuke at the moment?

Hey, maybe Shodai really is the next Ozeki. No, wait. He's Shodai. Never mind.

The YDC doesn't grumble about either one of the Yokozuna when they meet after the basho.

Ura turns out to be perfectly healthy after all, having faked a visit to the hospital for surgery, and wins the Makushita yusho with a zensho.

Ridiculous prediction: Hattorizakura wins the Jonokuchi yusho.

Zow. Hakuho is making more than everyone else making ¥600,000 or more, combined, from Ikioi through Kakuryu.

Didn't A Flock Of Seagulls have a famous song about that story?

He's kyujo. He might do that in Jonidan in March, or we might not see him on the dohyo again.

For Takekaze, 5/02 is listed as both his pro debut and his makuuchi debut, although the basho count differs. Presumably, one of the two is a typo?

Come to think of it, "dai-Yokozuna" is already in use as a de facto term for Yokozuna with 10+ yusho. It's not a rank (and probably shouldn't be), but it's a thing.

1. No. 2. There's no other way to measure someone's performance -- short of inventing a time machine, there's no way to get a modern rikishi to face off against a Yokozuna from the past, in their prime. 3. No. 4. Because they're not allowed to finish makekoshi without retiring, and they still have good sumo ahead of them. 5. Yokozuna is meant to be the top rank, so this question is meaningless.

Also, Yokozuna can go kyujo with few consequences (unless you overdo it *cough* Kisenosato *cough*), and Ozeki can go kyujo at the cost of just being kadoban the next time around, or if they're already kachikoshi and aren't in the middle of a tsuna run (*cough* Goeido *cough*). That's not true in the other divisions. On top of that, only Makuuchi and Juryo appear on all 15 days, which gives most of the other divisions the chance to take a break and possibly recover when they might have gone kyujo, and Makuuchi is a lot bigger than Juryo is.

Looking at the graph, if an Ozeki had managed to take one of the two yushos that Kakuryu won, we would have ended the year with yushos from a Maegashira, a Komusubi, a Sekiwake, an Ozeki, a Yokozuna, and a Dai-Yokozuna, which has never happened. If you don't distinguish between Y and d-Y, the last time four of the five possible ranks won in a calendar year was 2000.

Why does Ryuden not count as a Makuuchi return, when he had dropped to Jk17w at one point? Is it just that he hadn't made his Makuuchi debut before then?

I don't think he looks arrogant at all -- to me, he comes across as baby faced and cute. He became one of the rikishi I follow after he gave an adorably inarticulate sansho interview a few bashos ago, with a swollen face from an injury that day.

More to the point, he's a major factor in the yusho arasoi, and winning the Sandanme yusho would give him even more upward propulsion.

Gokushindo vs. Tsushimanada -- day 13 Makushita (deciding the yusho, to boot)

According to a quick Google search for "martial arts near Ryogoku Kokugikan", the closest martial arts school to the Ryogoku Kokugikan that isn't a Sumo heya is a Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu school that's practically next door. Therefore, Daito-ryu is the closest martial art to Sumo.