Makushita TD Performance Post-2001

[Tenshinhan]

Makushita Tsukedashi since 2001*

Rikishi	Debut	Debut Rank	Highest Rank	Intai
Kakizoe	2001	Ms15 TD	Komusubi	2012
Asahimaru	2002	Ms15 TD	Makushita 2	2008
Takekaze	2002	Ms15 TD	Sekiwake	-
Futeno	2003	Ms15 TD	Komusubi	2011
Takamifuji	2004	Ms15 TD	Juryo 13	2007
Oiwato	2004	Ms15 TD	Maegashira 16	-
Buseizan	2004	Ms15 TD	Makushita 7	-
Hakiai	2005	Ms15 TD	Makushita 2	2015
Wakakeisho	2006	Ms15 TD	Makushita 1	-
Kiyoseumi	2007	Ms10 TD	Maegashira 13	2011
Daishoumi	2007	Ms15 TD	Juryo 10	2011
Myogiryu	2009	Ms15 TD	Sekiwake	-
Chiyotairyu	2011	Ms15 TD	Komusubi	-
Yamaguchi	2012	Ms15 TD	Maegashira 16	-
Endo	2013	Ms10 TD	Maegashira 1	-
Ichinojo	2014	Ms15 TD	Sekiwake	-
Daishomaru	2014	Ms15 TD	Juryo 5	-
Mitakeumi	2015	Ms10 TD	Maegashira 10	-
Sakamoto	2016	Ms15 TD	???	-

* In 2001 the debut rank for Makushita TD was raised from Ms60 to Ms15/ Ms10.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Tenshinhan

[Asashosakari]

(Blinking...) In an 11-year-old thread?!

[Sumozumo]

April Fools!

[Tenshinhan]

Recently I learned not to open a new thread if there exists another one. :-)

I assume something was wrong with the actual maezumo thread that necessitated the creation of this one?

[Asameshimae]

I knew a number of tsukedashi rikishi never made it to sekitori or didn't last long as one, but I thought the success rate was a bit higher. Yeesh.

[Johnofuji]

Thanks for that Tenshinhan san. I like following guys on that list as I have fought some at amateur level. There are quite a few good amasumo who have just missed out on the Golden ticket so maybe that gives them a bit more time to develop before getting chucked into the deep end. Asameshimae-most of these guys are university rikishi. Katrina Watts tells me that they are pretty beaten up by the time they get to Ozumo that they often fail to live up to expectations. I have even heard that some train harder than those in Ozumo. I was hoping that Wakakeisho could have had a similar career to Yoshikaze but unfortunately he must have been held back by some of the injuries he had even when he was world champion. If Ichihara hadn't been dismissed for being naughty it was only a matter of time until his body gave up to. Endo's last injury was probably unavoidable but he too has had a beating over the years. One day I want to finish my list of all the amazumo crossovers who have competed internationally. It's scary to think Ichinojo wasn't considered Mongolia's strongest and he didn't win all his bouts at the 2012 world championships.

[Asashosakari]

Recently I learned not to open a new thread if there exists another one. :-)

This may well be the very first time I'm tempted to post a "not sure if serious or just..." gif.

Seriously - please mods, split this out and let the old thread sink back down into its well-deserved grave.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Asashosakari

[Otokonoyama]

Done.

I realize that we have a lot of relatively new members here on SF, but it doesn't hurt to review the short list of rules upon joining. A Rules link appears on the bottom right part of the screen on all SF pages, right next to our privacy policy. It would probably be a good idea for the member registration process to actually take the registrants to the rules page as one of the steps in the sign up procedure.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Otokonoyama

[shumitto]

If anything posting the list on the very old thread reminded us that the three 'talents' of 2004 didn't progress much. Only Kanbayashi/Oiwato made it to makuuchi and he was not exceptionally bright. I agree with Asameshimae, it is kind of frustrating to see this list.

[Asameshimae]

Heartily agreed shumitto. Very telling indeed. And thank you for making a post about MTD, because if I blinked I might have thought this was a thread about how threads were not like fine wines, and how to avoid such detrimental behaviour..

Anyway,

You can go back a little bit further, and the story isn't much more inspiring. Look at the last three who made it to the vaunted Ozeki: Miyabiyama, Dejima and Kotosmitsuki. Dejima and Miyabiyama were little more than flashes in the pan at Ozeki. Kotomitsuki is more of a success story, but he certainly took his sweet time about it. I guess it could still be said that these three still did have relatively long careers as sekitori, which is something of course. And I realize a lot of these rikishi are already peaking when they come in at MTD, but I am surprised people still pin so many hopes on these guys when the proof just isn't in this particular pudding.

[Andreas21]

Very interesting list indeed. Ichinjo and Endo had been about the only ones where the system was appropriate as they rose to Sanyaku straight away. Even the likes of Myogiryu and Chiyotairyu might have profited from a lower entry as their injuries are probably related to the short transition time.

My take is that the system might still be useful but in a more differentiated way. A big problem is the big gap between those who make the Tsukedashi and those who nearly made it and had to start from Mz, for a year's long ride through the low divisions. Better be several entry points at low Ms, Sd, Jd for different grades of Amasumo achievements.

Why did they actually rise ot from Ms60 to Ms15? Just one 7-0 basho at Ms60 woudn't have hurt even the best. At least not as much as to sit out a honbasho for Visa regulations.

[Tenshinhan]

This may well be the very first time I'm tempted to post a "not sure if serious or just..." gif.

Seriously - please mods, split this out and let the old thread sink back down into its well-deserved grave.

This wasn't meant too serious. Anyway, as the headline of the old thread looked suitable to me, I thought it would be okay to use it.

Done.

I realize that we have a lot of relatively new members here on SF, but it doesn't hurt to review the short list of rules upon joining. A Rules link appears on the bottom right part of the screen on all SF pages, right next to our privacy policy. It would probably be a good idea for the member registration process to actually take the registrants to the rules page as one of the steps in the sign up procedure.

Thank you. Now I have read the rules of the forum and will try to follow them. I apologize. Thanks for your patience with green forum members.

[Flohru]

Obviously you could also interpret the list differently - since 2007 all TD made it to Sekitori, all but one to Makuuchi and three of seven (to early to tell for Daishomaru and Mitakeumi, but their start was not bad) even to Sanyaku. Possibly our rating of the TD is biased by Buseizan, Wakakeisho and Hakiai still going on and struggling in lower Makushita/Sandamne.

[Asashosakari]

Why did they actually rise ot from Ms60 to Ms15?

Because the Kyokai vastly reduced the pool of eligible rikishi, and they apparently felt they had to offer something in trade, so those few who still made the cut after the changes were allowed to start from a better position than before.

[shumitto]

Why did they actually rise ot from Ms60 to Ms15?

Because the Kyokai vastly reduced the pool of eligible rikishi, and they apparently felt they had to offer something in trade, so those few who still made the cut after the changes were allowed to start from a better position than before.

By reducing the pool they would have improved the quality of new entrants, but that doesn't seem be the case. I tried to run a simple query of all tsukedashi entrants, however 'TD' is not a valid expression in the query field; neither is ms10td and the like but my impression is that the generation from the 90's (Kaiho, Miyabiyama, Oikari, Dejima, Kotomitsuki and co.) is not much worse than that from the 2000's. The opposite might be true, contrary to apparent logic.

Edited April 5, 2015 by shumitto

[Asashosakari]

By reducing the pool they would have improved the quality of new entrants ...

No, that's a non sequitur - that's only true if the new regulations are actually better at separating "good" collegiate rikishi from "not so good" ones. At least two reasons to believe that's not actually the case:

1) The introduction of the 12-month time limit for using your eligibility - several high-quality rikishi like Jokoryu have had to start from maezumo even though they were eligible for MsTd at one point.

2) All the qualifying tournaments are structured as single knockouts, and high amounts of luck are inherent in those. Doesn't have much of an effect on finding "great" rikishi (e.g. Endo), but if your goal is to tell apart "good" rikishi like Oiwato from "not so good" ones like Hakiai, that's pretty hopeless. (Unless you can run the same tournament a few dozen times to improve your confidence in the results...) Making only the tournament winners eligible, as opposed to semifinalists or even more, isn't much of an improvement because of that.

In the end, the revised regulations didn't really improve the selection process, they simply amounted to a reduction of the rikishi pool by random draw. As somebody once noted elsewhere, if the same regulations had already been in place back in the 1990s, then Masutsuyoshi would have still been a tsukedashi but Dejima would have started from maezumo.

I don't think the rule change was about improving the average tsukedashi starter anyway, it was likely just about making fewer rikishi eligible for immediate high status because oyakata kept complaining about collegiate rikishi who didn't have to go through the same early-career rigours as everybody else.. If they could have scrapped the tsukedashi system completely, they probably would have, but I suspect they didn't want the PR problems that would have come with that.

Edit: By the way, you can find the tsukedashi starters of the old system by filtering by entry level.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Asashosakari

[Asameshimae]

I'm not sure about how I feel about the fairness of MTD for rikishi, but it does add a little variety for the fans - including me. Regardless of other changes I do wish they had kept the entry level at Maku 60 though. At Maku 10-15, a lucky basho or two is enough to get you to juryo (whether or not you last long there) and I think rikishi should have to show a little more consistency to be awarded that privilege.

Edited April 5, 2015 by Asameshimae

[Senkoho]

At Maku 10-15, a lucky basho or two is enough to get you to juryo.

A couple more and you can even get to Makuuchi, somehow!

Edited April 6, 2015 by Senkoho

[Sumozumo]

Wakekisho, what happened to him? A 7-0 Y off the bat then never doing anything of note the rest of his career...

[Jakusotsu]

Wakekeisho, what happened to him? A 7-0 Y off the bat then never doing anything of note the rest of his career...

Nothing of note? A perfect career record!

http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Rikishi.aspx?r=6643

[shumitto]

I'm not sure about how I feel about the fairness of MTD for rikishi, but it does add a little variety for the fans - including me. Regardless of other changes I do wish they had kept the entry level at Maku 60 though. At Maku 10-15, a lucky basho or two is enough to get you to juryo (whether or not you last long there) and I think rikishi should have to show a little more consistency to be awarded that privilege.

Without a few exceptions most college grads have little problems to reach upper-sandanme, lower-makushita, so instead of these criteria that restrict but don't select, let most of them in from makushita 60. Even the best would have to fight at least two basho in makushita instead of one and the not so good ones would at least be spared almost year of not very competitive sumo in Jonidan, Jonokuchi and Sandanme.

[Asashosakari]

Without a few exceptions most college grads have little problems to reach upper-sandanme, lower-makushita, so instead of these criteria that restrict but don't select, let most of them in from makushita 60. Even the best would have to fight at least two basho in makushita instead of one and the not so good ones would at least be spared almost year of not very competitive sumo in Jonidan, Jonokuchi and Sandanme.

The ironic thing is that they were a lot more progressive about it 100+ years ago, with all manner of accelerated starting positions being handed out to newcomers who were obviously overqualified for a jonokuchi/maezumo start (rikishi from the other professional areas, people with experience from rural / town sumo, etc.).

[shumitto]

Without a few exceptions most college grads have little problems to reach upper-sandanme, lower-makushita, so instead of these criteria that restrict but don't select, let most of them in from makushita 60. Even the best would have to fight at least two basho in makushita instead of one and the not so good ones would at least be spared almost year of not very competitive sumo in Jonidan, Jonokuchi and Sandanme.

The ironic thing is that they were a lot more progressive about it 100+ years ago, with all manner of accelerated starting positions being handed out to newcomers who were obviously overqualified for a jonokuchi/maezumo start (rikishi from the other professional areas, people with experience from rural / town sumo, etc.).

They probably think that with 6 basho/year instead of 2 such a system wouldn't be of much importance, but considering they take the time to split new recruits into 3 groups according to their ability, it wouldn't be too difficult to use this screening or any other to have a more customized entry system. That of course, would mean changing how hierarchy works among other things.

[Mongolith]

If anything I think they should relax the Ms places as Asashosakari stated they did in the past. Maybe increase the Ms qualification period for amateur champs to 24 months so wrestlers could finish their degree if they are more than halfway through. For example ms15 w/in 12 months and ms60 12-24 months. They already have a lot of miles in their bodies so why have them chalk up more beating up pups in the lower 3 ranks as Joker had to do. College sumotori are typically known a bit by the public and will have at least a minute fanbase established from their respective universities if they rise up quickly thus generating buzz. Seeing guys meteor up the rankings (ex. Endo and Ichi) is exciting and if they don't have the tools then they can quickly move on with their lives.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Mongolith