Sue

Rikishi who are older than everyone below them on the banzuke: Sd57w Shoketsu 05.09.1976 Jk6w Sawaisamu 07.02.1977 Jk14e Higohikari 27.01.1988 Jk14w Chiyotsurugi 18.06.2003

You fly to England to have a conversation with Jason Sudeikis.

The good news is that there's plenty of time for M, T, and any others (was Goeido's danpatsu-shiki a superspreader event?) to recover fully and not be contagious by Osaka.

Go Sue!

I guess Oguruma isn't such a big wheel any more.

It's a shame that they didn't bust him all the way down to Jonokuchi -- now he's missed his chance to collect one of every yusho, unless he hangs around for a long time at the end of his career, or gets badly injured or suspended again.

Abi's punishment was a warning to the other rikishi, and Asanoyama went and did it anyway. Also, he hung his shisho and the head of the NSK out to dry and made them publicly lose face. Some of his punishment was for the actual offence, but the other half was for lying about it.

Tsukidashi: you give your aite a superhumanly hard shove, and fling them out of the ring. You stay put. Oshidashi: you push against your aite, and push them out. You go with them. Okuridashi: like oshidashi, but you maneuver behind them, and give them the bum's rush. Yorikiri: like oshidashi, but you give them a wedgie while doing it. Tsuridashi: like yorikiri, but with a power wedgie.

If it were up to me (and it never will be), I'd remove rikishi from the banzuke entirely after their second full basho spent kyujo, and then tsukedashi them back in at a rank calculated from a chart based on their last rank on the basho and time spent away once they're ready to come back in. (For long suspensions, you could move them straight to Bg immediately.) If you wanted to protect lower rankers from being curb stomped by over-ranked seniors on their way back up, you could give them a backstop rank (Ms15 for Sanyaku, Ms100 for Makuuchi, Sd100 for Juryo, for example, or Ms10/Ms15/Ms100 if you wanted to be more generous, and Sd100 for anyone who'd gotten to the Makushita joi) and tsukedashi them back in at either their backstop rank or the rank from the chart, whichever is higher. You'd want to make the backstop a one-time thing, though, to prevent it from extending careers of folks who ought to be moving on to blue jacket wearing, and force rikishi to re-earn higher ranks after reentry to qualify for another backstop if they go long kyujo again.

Ichinojo is quite hard to tsuridashi, eh, Tochinoshin?

I still haven't seen the official announcement of Mitakeumi's promotion, so technically, he's still the "next Ozeki." And there's a strong possibility of the return of Next Ozeki Shodai in Natsu....

...and Hakuho singlehandedly accounts for more than a quarter of that total.

Did Tochinoshin really just try to tsuridashi Ichinojo? He's just about the worst guy to try that against.

...and now Charlie Brown has actually kicked the field goal! Congratulations, Mitakeumi!

That's because he's Mitakeumi.

It's going to be very difficult for him to win 22 matches by senshuraku. (For a final total of twenty-two and minus seven?)

Men can absolutely be feminists. Everyone should absolutely not be a TERF. ...and that's as far as we really ought to go on the subject. Back to sumo?

If he's at mandatory retirement age, he's hardly "wakai" anymore....

TERFs can all go to hell, and there's no evidence anywhere that Terunofuji is a TERF.

Sanyaku and the joi are not a separate division. And a contender from farther down in the division will be matched up with the top sanyaku folks later on, and won't win without defeating them. Stage-managing the outcome to force it onto one of the top people would be a terrible move. (By comparison, look at how rarely the Makushita yusho goes to someone from the promotion zone.)

If he loses 4 straight, he's on an 11-10-X run for next time, and would be targeting, ideally, a 12. 9-11-10-11 might do it, but who can say?

Why are Fukai and Kanno at two wins out? They're outside the Ms5 promotion zone, and should have needed a zensho to advance.

Wait, Barcelona, NY, as in the little town on Lake Erie? Or did you move from Catalonia to Manhattan? Welcome, either way.

I suspect that in the moment, he thought that Meisei was on the ground, or that he had come in from the other hanamichi. I've done this myself numerous times when shinpanning Naginata matches -- red scores a point, but I put up my white flag because I thought white was red. Usually, this happens when the two competitors have circled around each other, and white is now on red's side. In a Naginata match, I can take down my white flag and put up red, and I have two other shinpans in line of sight to help me catch my mistake. The gyoji has less room to fix mistakes, and doesn't have anyone, other than the shinpans calling a monoii, to point out that he's pointing at a different rikishi than he thought.

Okay, so a nakabi kachikoshi is making this look less ridiculous, but this is Mitakeumi we're talking about here.