Sorry, I don’t know if that’s the fish for winning the tournament or the fish for becoming ozeki… again.

(Okay, it looks like it’s the fish for winning the tournament, from the comments on this Reddit thread.)

Last time I did a profile for Aonishiki was January:

No worries, I’m updating it.

Aonishiki Rank and Weight Trajectory

Looking among the Sanyaku wrestlers, and the three in the playoff specifically, let’s compare sizes:

Aonishiki is the shortest in the Sanyaku for July 2026, and there’s nothing he can do about that.

He’s gained weight — there’s a fake “jump” of 11 kgs in there, because of how the weight is measured. I was able to get his weight at Juryo 5, and when he entered pro sumo, but not any interim measures. So the trajectory was likely smoother than that.

Given his foot troubles, there is probably a reasonable limit to how much weight he can put on without causing lots of performance issues:

So he needs to be careful.

Still, way to go in that three-way playoff. It would have been nice not to have needed the playoff, but hey, we always like ending the tournament with more drama.

Aonishiki’s Kimarite

Before updating the cumulative kimarite record, let’s look at the kimarite just for the July tournament (including his losses). Aonishiki won a Technique Prize, so let’s look at those techniques:

To aggregate, of his 12 wins in normal bouts (so, not including the playoffs):

• yorikiri: 5

• uwatenage: 2

• oshidashi: 1

• shitatehineri: 1

• uwatedashinage: 1

• katasukashi: 1

• yoritaoshi: 1

Seven different kimarite, of which shitatehineri is very rare (0.13% of wins in sumoDB), katasukashi a little more common but this is the only katasukashi on his record (0.98% win percentage overall for all rikishi in sumoDB), and yoritaoshi is one of his signature moves, as we shall see.

Aonishiki is primarily yorikiri and oshidashi (just as with the sumoDB), with almost 55% of his wins coming from those two kimarite alone.

But yoritaoshi is his third-most-common kimarite, at about 6% of his wins. It’s not that much higher than the sumoDB overall percentage.

It’s not exactly fair to compare his loss percentages for kimarite — “Oh, yoritaoshi is his most common kimarite he loses to, equal to oshidashi!”, which is true, but you need to look at his loss percentage (or win percentage).

His cumulative win percentage is 77%. As with Onosato, before he made Yokozuna, he hadn't had much experience with losing.

Anyway, he got the giant macaron:

Omedetou!

Spreadsheet

Aonishiki 2026 08 01

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So in the meantime, here’s a fun video from the August regional tour (aka jungyo):

Yes, this is completely in Japanese, but I found the English closed captions to be very good. You’ll probably have to go over to YouTube to turn the captions on, but there’s this fun bit:

This is the “Oyakata Channel”, which is from the official Japan Sumo Association (or Nihon Sumo Kyokai), which promotes sumo, getting the coaches/seniors, who are retired sumo wrestlers (or oyakata) to host videos and promote the sport.

It’s primarily for a Japanese audience, but as I said, the English subtitles seem too good to be auto-translated. A few of the stables have gotten some good English translators for their videos, I’ve noticed — they’ve noticed they have non-Japanese fans now.

This is Oyakata Onogawa interviewing some of the wrestlers, who wrestled under the name Akeyoshi from 1998-2018, reaching his highest rank of Maegashira 2.

At the end of each interview, he asks each wrestler to say something to the fans:

Okay, Ichiyamamoto. He also let them pick the next guy for him to interview, similar to a training exercise where it’s a never-ending bout, and the guys just keep picking the next opponent until they’re all exhausted.

Abi picked Ichiyamamoto to be interviewed next.

Okay, enough hilarity.

One of the guys interviewed later was Shishi:

It’s a tongue twister in English and Japanese (Shishi sushi suki — that’s how he said it… I didn’t hear any particles… Shishi’s Japanese is okay, but he often claims not to speak Japanese at all, while actually speaking it pretty okay and actually dropping Japanese wordplay. He’s cute.)

Oh right, the kinboshi.

Kinboshi count update for current Yokozuna, July 2026

So yay, we actually had both Hoshoryu and Onosato around for the July 2026 tournament, even if Hoshoryu didn’t stick around for the whole thing. But still, it was 13 bouts, which is nothing to sneeze at.

What were the kinboshi additions for this tournament?

Hoshoryu: 2 (Fujinokawa, Hakunofuji)

Onosato: 2 (Fujinokawa, Gonoyama)

Hmm, Fujinokawa has racked up 4 kinboshi so far. It looks like he’ll be in Sanyaku in September, but let’s see if he’ll get to stay. That’s the heartbreak of Sanyaku for someone like Fujinokawa — those kinboshi bonuses sure can be sweet.

Total kinboshi given so far:

Hoshoryu: 17

Onosato: 13

I don’t feel like putting up ranking tables for kinboshi count given, because it’s going to require Hoshoryu and Onosato to simply be in more tournaments and stick around enough.

Kinboshi Percentage Ranking

This is something worth looking at, because Hoshoryu and Onosato can move their ranking here.

Except we know their percentage isn’t low.

Yeah, they’re not in the 20 lowest percentages of the 31 modern Yokozuna.

Not much movement occurred for Hoshoryu, but for Onosato, his percentage decreased from 28.9% in April to 28.3% in this table, which got him to move up the ranking.

Take what wins you can.

I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to lose to Fujinokawa, for what it’s worth. Which brings me to my next stat: the high percentage of Maegashira matches the Yokozuna have.

Percentage of Matches which were against Maegashira Wrestlers

Hoshoryu and Onosato have been having 60%-ish of their matches with Maegashira wrestlers. The Sanyaku has been rather thin.

I think a lot of this has been related to injuries and variability among the top wrestlers right now.

At the low end of this table, the percentage of kinboshi opportunities is relatively low:

More stats, kinboshi and otherwise

I’m not going to update the correlation graph this time, but I will link to two items.

First, someone who is far more into kinboshi than I am:

Ginboshi Observatory

An introduction to obsessing about Kinboshi

Introduction…

Read more

a month ago · 4 likes · Ginboshi Observatory

And a quote (and yeah, you link (in a relevant way) to me, that will get my attention… heh):

Kinboshi are beautiful and fascinating because of their relative scarcity. In the modern era (1958 to present) of 6 basho per year, there have only been 749 gold stars in 409 basho, or about 1.83 per event. That might sound like a lot, but when taken against the 315 top-division matches taking place in each 15-day tournament (not including playoffs), the likelihood that any one of them chosen at random is a kinboshi is just under six tenths of a percent. Granted, almost all matches of a given basho are definitionally ineligible to produce a gold star: generally speaking, yokozuna will each only fight ~8 matches against maegashira ranked opponents per basho, meaning on average only ~5% of a tournament’s matches even meet the necessary criteria. Depending on how good the yokozuna is, they may have a kinboshi yield rate of around 15% (shoutout to Mary Pat Campbell at Sumo Stats), meaning gold stars may only pop up in a fifteenth of a twentieth of all sumo matches. Nonetheless, kinboshi feel like they are always on the edge of possible, even though they are never probable. In short, they are a tantalizing statistical delicacy.

Part of the drama of a kinboshi (including, if you’re the type, you may throw your cushion…. I’ve thrown a couch cushion in the comfort of my home, when so moved) is someone who is supposed to be the BIG DAWG getting overthrown by somebody of much lower rank.

The thing is, of course, you may have somebody like Fujinokawa who is on their way to Sanyaku.

SumoStats: the OTHER site

Yeah, yeah, mine is just a substack. The other site keeps adding interesting stuff:

https://sumostats.com/injuries

So, I really enjoy what he’s done with this: [you can change the look of the site if you get a free login]

But wait! There’s this!

And you can change the order — that one’s by rank. Here it is by severity.

Some of these injuries are over — this timeline covers the last 6 basho - approximately a year.

Anyway, check them out!

Spreadsheet

Yokozuna Kinboshi Data 2026 07 31

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Height-Weight Scatterplot for July 2026 Grand Sumo Tournament

The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.

(The color corresponds to bubble size, but the colors are similar, taken from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).

I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:

• Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)

• Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)

• Lower Maegashira (M09 - M16)

All the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, allowing you to see where the wrestlers are positioned in relation to height and weight.

I used to have the weight limits go up to 200 kg, but I had to push it up to 210 kg this time to accommodate newcomer Kazuma. More on him when we get to the newbies.

There are always exactly 42 wrestlers in Makuuchi, so while the Sanyaku may expand or contract in size, the Maegashira ranks will go up to whatever numbers they need to go up to… 16 this time, as we have FOUR Sekiwake.

Sanyaku July 2026

As has been the case since we’ve had Hoshoryu & Onosato as our Yokozunas, there are two “clusters” in the sanyaku: the big guys… and the not-as-big guys.

But now I want to talk about our “summer situation”: the FOUR Sekiwake!

Two of them, Atamifuji and Kotoshoho, were sitting at those ranks in May, and both scored 9 wins in May. They’ll want to do better than that to achieve Ozeki… and they may have been able to have done so well due to so many high-level absences:

So best wishes to those two.

But let’s look at the other two:

Aonishiki: fell to Sekiwake after his kadoban status in May, and then going kyujo in May. Can re-achieve Ozeki rank if he wins 10+ bouts in Nagoya.

Wakatakakage: promoted to Sekiwake from Komusubi, after winning 12 bouts and the tournament in May.

So both WTK and Aonishiki are targeting double-digit wins this tournament: Aonishiki, so he can recapture Ozeki status, and Wakatakakage to add to an Ozeki run (from the Kirishima precedent, his May win could be seen as his start).

I’m pausing here for a minute to drop Hiro Morita’s Sumo Prime Time coverage of the sumo exhibition in Paris — and Hoshoryu and Onosato were there. I haven’t heard of any kyujo announcements for Nagoya…. yet. I will leave it at that.

Upper Maegashira July 2026

The main movement I noticed here was Hakunofuji rocketing up from M10 into M04, and his height/weight dot on the plot is solidly in the middle of the pack for both height and weight.

A few of the shorter (and lighter) guys are on here, but mostly these rank-and-filers aren’t too far out in sizes.

If I clustered these, I’d have the shorter guys (ranging from Fujinokawa over to Gonoyama), which go from muscular/small to more butterball, as one group.

I’d have the taller guys together, ranging from Wakamotoharu (the skinniest of the group) over to Takayasu.

And then everybody else. Because they’re not that distinctive in shape/size.

Lower Maegashira July 2026

Here’s where our newbies and the returnees are.

And it’s usually in the lower ranks that we find the most variability in weight and height.

Kazuma is one of the complete newbies, up from Juryo, and he’s the reason I had to extend the weight axis as he comes in at 205 kg (452 pounds) at the height of 185 cm (6’1”).

Kazuma has come up through Juryo pretty rapidly, having been in Makushita in November 2025, been in Juryo for three tournaments, and now is in Makuuchi.

The other newbie is Daiseizan, who has had a slower rise through Juryo, having been in Juryo for 11 tournaments before being promoted to Makuuchi. Mind you, many wrestlers never make it to Makuuchi at all.

Even though the newbies always come in at low ranks and will be paired up with similarly-low-ranked wrestlers, it can always be difficult for those new to Makuuchi.

We also have returnees: Takerufuji and Onokatsu. There’s often a switcheroo at these lower ranks. Four Makuuchi guys dropped into Juryo:

• Tokihayate (M12 → J02)

• Tamawashi (M13 → J07 oh noooooo)

• Oshoumi (M15 → J05)

• Ryuden (M16 → J03)

Ryuden has been bouncing up and down around, and I don’t want to talk about Tamawashi’s situation right yet (also: Takayasu).

So I will wait until after the July tournament to say anything about the old guys.

Spreadsheet

2026 July Grand Sumo Tournament Height And Weight 2026 06 30

278KB ∙ XLSX file

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Enjoy your win, Wakatakakage!

He won the technique prize on top of the yusho, so let’s take a look at his record as well as the tournament performance.

Wakatakakage Rank and Weight Graph, Jan 2022 - May 2026

I’ve circled his two tournament wins, first in March 2022, and now in May 2026.

There’s one way in which WTK’s graph looks similar to many winners: a steady increase in weight (from 130kg to 138kg, more or less… though there was a bobble there recently).

However, there is that large rollercoaster in rank history for WTK, which is not usual for tournament winners.

In March 2023, a year after that first tournament win, WTK suffered a severe injury in a match against the then-named Kotonowaka, dropping out, and then receiving surgery (as reported here - ACL/meniscus). At the time, there were expectations that he would be out up to a year, which would result in a large drop in rank.

As it turned out, he missed “only” three tournaments, and rose in the ranks soon thereafter. He fell down to Makushita ranks, and it took until July 2024 to return to Makuuchi.

Wakatakakage Kimarite Profile

Wakatakakage’s kimarite profile isn’t necessarily that notable, except for a few items:

• okuridashi: rear push-out, which is on WTK’s win list 25 times, which involves getting one’s opponent turned around and push them out of the ring

• Balance between yorikiri and oshidashi: You may not think this is notable, but while the overall stats are fairly balanced in the sumo database, they’re not necessarily balanced for individual wrestlers. Usually, they prefer grabbing the belt or shoving/slapping. WTK goes either way.

• Weakness to hatakikomi: After the top two kimarite, WTK is particularly weak to losing to hatakikomi, compared to other wrestlers. Partly this is henka (yeaaaah), but in general, someone who moves fast up against an equally fast opponent, and also being low to the ground.

Reminder - this is where Wakatakakage lands in the weight/height scatterplot:

He’s shorter and lighter than most of the Makuuchi wrestlers. Yeah, the bigger guys are going to try to slap him down — it’s easier than trying to reach for his belt, that’s for sure.

Technique Prize

As mentioned earlier, Wakatakakage won the technique prize this basho, so let’s look at his wins:

Including his playoff win, we have 13 wins:

• Yorikiri: 5 times

• Oshidashi: 4

• Tsukiotoshi: 2

• Tsuridashi: 1

• Katasukashi: 1

Five different kimarite, which isn’t too shabby.

It’s not merely the range of kimarite displayed, but how skillfully executed.

Wakatakakage has SEVEN technique prizes (including this one), and that’s the most among current Makuuchi wrestlers. The next one down is Kirishima, with 4 technique prizes so far.

You can see why Ichiyamamoto is such a fan. [that links to a YouTube short]

Sumo Prime Time Wrap Up

Yes, I know so much of the Sanyaku was missing from this tournament, but it’s a legit win for Wakatakakage.

I hope the guys have fun on their upcoming trip to Paris!

Spreadsheet

Wakatakakage 2026 06 03

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Look, I’m not going to talk about the kyujo announcements for the May tournament, other than the two that were announced before the tournament began: Onosato and Aonishiki.

I know of five total kyujo, which include those two. All of these are due to injuries. I will not comment on these — you can go to the various sumo news sites to find the information if you’d like.

But I was wondering: what’s the worst situation for kyujo ever seen during a tournament? (Okay, let’s keep it to the “modern era”.)

For obvious reasons, I’m just omitting all the COVID-related absences, as many of the wrestlers who had to miss tournaments didn’t even have COVID themselves. So the whole 2020-2022 era, more or less, is jumped over.

Worst Recent Bashos for Injuries at High Levels

I will quote the results Gemini gave me (and I will look up in SumoDB to see what happened):

September 2017: High-Water Mark of Cursed Basho

This tournament is widely considered by sumo historians to be the most physically ruined basho of the modern era. The carnage started before Day 1 and just kept cascading:

• The Rank-and-File Exoduses: By the time the tournament wrapped up, 9 Makuuchi rikishi were officially out due to physical trauma.

• The Yokozuna Blackout: Three out of the four active Yokozuna (Hakuho, Kakuryu, and Kisenosato) withdrew before or immediately after the start due to a knee, foot, and pectoral injury, respectively.

• The Ozeki/San’yaku Collapse: Ozeki Terunofuji tore his meniscus during the tournament and had to pull out, while several upper Maegashira suffered severe joint injuries. It left Harumafuji to limp his way to a yusho against an incredibly thin, depleted field.

SumoDB doesn’t quite agree with this story.

I looked at the torikumi for the final day, and there were 18 bouts in Makuuchi, all being Makuuchi ranks. That is, 36 wrestlers (I’m not counting the playoff between Harumafuji and Goeido).

That means, only 6 wrestlers were missing out of the total 42.

Now, two of the wrestlers, Sadanoumi and Aoiyama, had missed some days of the tournament. So 8 Makuuchi wrestlers had missed some days of the tournament. Wikipedia agrees.

I’m already suspicious of Gemini. Hmmm.

We know LLMs are bad at counting. I pointed it out to Gemini, and it looks like a Juryo wrestler got caught in the count.

Anyway, here was the slaughter:

• Hakuho (Yokozuna) - Left knee injury (Absent from Day 1)

• Kakuryu (Yokozuna) - Right foot injury (Absent from Day 1)

• Kisenosato (Yokozuna) - Left pectoral muscle injury (Absent from Day 1)

• Terunofuji (Ozeki) - Left knee injury (Withdrew on Day 6)

• Takayasu (Ozeki) - Right thigh injury (Withdrew on Day 3, briefly re-entered Day 12, then went kyujo again)

• Aoiyama (Maegashira) - Right knee injury (Withdrew on Day 6)

• Sadanoumi (Maegashira) - Right ankle injury (Withdrew on Day 3)

• Ura (Maegashira) - Right knee injury (Withdrew on Day 3)

Man, Ura and his knees. And Terunofuji and his knees.

Some of the above folks were known for all sorts of injuries, and the 2017-2018 era had some “bad luck”, but if one follows specific wrestlers, we know that, like Kisenosato, there were some hideous choices made by coaches and wrestlers that led to the early end of careers (-cough- Kisenosato -cough-).

In the above list, Ura and Takayasu are still in Makuuchi and Sadanoumi is in Juryo. All the rest are retired.

July 2018 in Nagoya: Bye Bye Yokozunas (Again)

Let’s see what Gemini says, and let me check:

• Total Top-Division Kyujo: 8 Makuuchi wrestlers completely withdrew due to severe, documented injuries.

• The Record Dropouts: Once again, all three active Yokozuna went kyujo due to knee and spinal issues. To make matters worse, the newly promoted Ozeki Tochinoshin suffered a catastrophic right-foot injury on Day 5 and pulled out.

• This tournament was famous for having an unprecedented number of fusensho (default wins) handed out in the second week because the scheduling committee literally ran out of healthy top-tier guys to match against each other.

Again, I checked the torikumi on SumoDB, and on Day 15 (no playoff), Makuuchi had 18 bouts, all Makuuchi wrestlers, one of which was fusensho, so “only” 7 rikishi withdrew.

Look, these AI thingies cannot count. This is known.

But of those 7, three were all of the Yokozuna, one before the Nagoya basho started, and the other two during the tournament.

But wait! There’s more to 2018!

November 2018 in Kyushu: Down Goes Kisenosato! Death to Knees and Shoulders!

More from Gemini:

The injury crisis peaked in late 2018. In this tournament, 8 Makuuchi rikishi ended up on the kyujo list solely due to structural orthopedic damage.

• Yokozuna Kakuryu pulled out with an ankle injury, and Kisenosato dropped out after a disastrous 0-5 start where his torn pectoral muscle clearly hadn’t healed.

• A massive chunk of the mid-to-lower Maegashira ranks dissolved due to ACL tears and shoulder dislocations, clearing the way for Takakeisho to capture his very first Emperor’s Cup.

Okkkay, we know where to look.

And we know it’s not 8.

(You don’t want to know what Gemini says when I correct its mistakes, by the way. It’s disgusting.)

Only 6 had been missing. The torikumi on SumoDb shows it. Except the Wikipedia article shows 7 missing — Chiyomaru pulling out on the last day, I suppose. I’m not going to make a big deal out of Chiyomaru. He was low down on the banzuke.

So either it was 6 or 7, and we mainly care about what’s happening up in sanyaku, and not lower down.

Let’s focus on Kisenosato, especially since he’s Onosato’s stablemaster.

Downfall of Kisenosato: Tale of Injury Not Allowed to Heal

The Wiki article provides a little color:

Yokozuna career

Kisenosato was listed on the west side of the new banzuke released on February 27, 2017, the first Japanese born wrestler to appear as a yokozuna on the ranking sheets since Takanohana retired in January 2003.^[42] He told a press conference, “My mission is to always be involved in the championship title race. That is an absolute must.”^[42] At Osaka in March he began impressively, winning his first twelve matches to lead the tournament but was defeated by Harumafuji on day 13 sustaining shoulder and chest injuries as he fell from the dohyō.^[43] Despite leaving the arena with his arm in a sling, his stablemaster said Kisenosato was not immediately withdrawing from the tournament and would fight on Day 14.^[44] However he lost easily to Kakuryū.^[45] On the final day of the tournament, Kisenosato defeated Terunofuji to tie him with a record of 13–2 and force a playoff. In spite of his injured shoulder, Kisenosato won the playoff match beating Terunofuji again to win the tournament, his second in a row.^[46] This victory made him the first newly promoted yokozuna in 22 years to have won his debut tournament. His medical certificate was published by the Japan Sumo Association after the tournament, indicating injuries to his left chest muscle and left upper arm, with a month-long recovery period.^[47] He skipped the regional tour in April to allow his injuries to heal.^[48][49]

He was ranked as the top East Yokozuna on the May 2017 banzuke, the first time a Japanese wrestler held the highest position since Takanohana in July 2001.^[50] He withdrew from the tournament on Day 11 having lost four matches, due to his failure to recover from his upper body injuries and inability to use his left arm properly.

….

He entered the January 2018 tournament but withdrew on Day 6 with a 1–4 record having suffered three successive defeats to maegashira.^[56] His stablemaster indicated that Kisenosato had injured the left pectoralis major muscle of his chest, near his old injury.^[56] This marked the fifth successive tournament that he had either failed to enter or dropped out of.^[57]

Let me cut this short:

Kisenosato had an injury that had never been allowed to heal, and thus, his Yokozuna career looked like this:

That is, after being made Yokozuna, he won the first tournament he was in but by playing through an injury, and then had to withdraw from 5 tournaments midway, sat out 4 tournaments entirely, and had another tournament he withdrew from and announced his retirement.

Part of this was due to having a Japanese Yokozuna after a long gap — and his stablemaster forcing him to fight through the pain (which there are old stories of prior Yokozuna doing… which led to the death of one, and I’m not going to write about that one again right now.)

Unfortunately, by the time he was given time to sit three tournaments in a row to rest, and he was able to wrestle in the September 2018 tournament, the damage was done. The three Yokozuna at the time: Hakuho, Kakuryu, and Kisenosato were all able to wrestle, and Hakuho was able to dominate and get a perfect record. Not so much, Kakuryu and Kisenosato, who both won with 10-5 records.

Is the May 2026 Tournament Cursed?

Eh, not necessarily.

I named only those who we knew were injured before the tournament, and because I know not everybody gets to watch/hear in real time, I’m not naming the others who are out on injury.

So far, only 5 wrestlers (which includes those 2) are out.

I’m hoping that Nihonseki (Kisenosato’s elder name as the stablemaster for Onosato) considers well what it will take for Onosato to recover from his injuries, and similarly for Aonishiki’s stablemaster. I will not comment on any other wrestlers.

(Let’s not comment on anybody else.)

I may look to SumoDb for various queries later, but while I’m not happy with what’s happened to various wrestlers, we have definitely seen worse in the “modern era” of sumo.

I think the COVID era may have erased our memory of how bad it was in certain years.

(Also, the happiness of watching Hakuho may also have made us forget.)

Watch out, Frankfort!

One more day until the 2026 May Grand Sumo Tournament starts in Tokyo, so I thought I’d link to all the important site (especially the English-language ones), plus something I watched yesterday involving battling the AI-generating slop invading YouTube.

SUMO BINGO!

First, you gotta get your Sumo Bingo cards!

Sumo Kaboom

May the Sumo Be With You

Read more

4 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Sumo Kaboom

It’s a free game from Sumo Kaboom! Go to that link to get the instructions about the game (and to get your bingo card).

I play it each tournament, but note: it can be a bit frustrating at times. The cards are based on the banzuke, so if somebody is kyujo (aka absent for the entire tournament), that’s a dead square, and you can’t use it for a bingo at all.

This is important, because there is some news….

Onosato and Aonishiki are Kyujo for May Tournament

I do not consider kyujo announcements to be spoilers — we all want to know who will NOT be there for the tournament.

Link to the Reddit thread:

r/Sumo: Yokozuna Onosato and Ozeki Aonishiki to Miss Tournament (Kyujo); Failure to Secure Winning Record Leads to Ozeki Demotion; Former Kisenosato: “Condition Did Not Improve”

Excerpts:

Both Yokozuna Onosato (Nishonoseki) and Ozeki Aonishiki (Ajigawa), whose participation had been a focal point of attention, have decided to withdraw from the tournament.

Onosato’s mentor, Stablemaster Nishonoseki (former Yokozuna Kisenosato), explained, “His condition did not improve. He wasn’t even able to overwhelm the junior wrestlers in the stable.” Regarding the injured left shoulder, he revealed, “It’s gradually getting better, but things just weren’t clicking.” Onosato reportedly expressed a strong desire to make a comeback at the July tournament in Nagoya.

….

[Aonishiki] withdrew from the spring tour due to the toe fracture and injured his left ankle during practice on the 6th. This marks the first time Aonishiki has missed a tournament since his debut. If he does not enter mid-tournament and his losing record is finalized, he will be demoted from the Ozeki rank.

Just a real quick remark: when a wrestler gets demoted from Ozeki for having two consecutive losing records, which will happen to Aonishiki (possibly), he can regain Ozeki status from the next tournament (July) if he wins 10+ matches.

Or he may have to do what Kirishima did, which is attain Ozeki status again the hard way.

Aonishiki is only 22 years old, versus Kirishima who is 30 years old. If Aonishiki allows himself to recover properly, even if it means not returning to Ozeki the “easy” way, he has plenty of time to return to the top. I hope he and his sumo master consider well.

So far, those are the only two Makuuchi wrestlers who have announced absences.

(I’m hoping for Hoshoryu….)

Anti-AI Slop Rant from Sumo Spiffy

This one has been going around the English language sumo community, so you may have already seen it:

The first part is Sumo Spiffy tearing apart some entirely-AI-generated sumo-related YouTube videos, and man, they are awful. I didn’t even know these existed, because I’ve been sticking to my tried-and-true channels (will link to some below) and podcasts.

If you want to jump over his rant directly to Sumo Spiffy’s rcommendations, go to timestamp 11:25, where he starts talking about all sorts of sumo sources.

FWIW, I’ve used AI tools in making videos, but mainly to edit my audio (cut out ums/ahs, generate captions and transcripts, etc.) If you check out my channel, you’ll see it’s not about sumo (it’s just a hobby). I have three sumo videos on there, and they’re all old.

My Sumo Prep List

(And During the Tournament)

To be sure, my list below may not be unusual. Lots of people know these names.

These aren’t exclusive, by the way. These are just the ones I go to first.

Sumo Kaboom!

This is my OG podcast source — these Texas sisters post a few things on Youtube, but not everything. They’ve gotten some great interviews with John Gunning, Konishiki, Murray Johnson, and Aonishiki! (Those are on Youtube)

I’m subscribed to their weekly audio podcast, and listen every week (and yeah, I send things in from time to time, like Ura poetry.)

Sumo Kaboom Youtube channel

Sumo Kaboom audio podcast site

Sumo Kaboom substack

Sumo Kaboom ko-fi (I’m a monthly supporter!)

They cover the matches (after the fact, so no spoilers for me), but also a lot of the culture of sumo, and there’s a lot of fun stuff going on here.

Sumo Mainichi

Sumo Mainichi is an Australian couple who cover sumo daily during the tournament (thus the name). This has often been my daily audio podcast listen when I commute to work and can’t watch the matches (so yeah, I spoil myself).

They have a YouTube channel where they cover Juryo live on key days, and I agree with Dave and Amy that henka is a dog act.

Sumo Mainichi YouTube channel

Sumo Mainichi linktree

Sumo Mainichi podbean

Grand Sumo Breakdown

GSB, the unofficial podcast for official sumo fans, is a group of guys having a bunch of fun with pro and amateur U.S. sumo (mainly the pro sumo, but there is amateur sumo as well, which I’m starting to follow).

Their episodes are less frequent than the two above, which is fine by me, because their episodes are much longer. But they do everything in good humor, and have a lot of fun. I like how they rag on each other.

GSB Wordpress

GSB YouTube

Sumo PrimeTime

Hiro Morita has insider access with the JSA (and he’s not going to say anything critical about them), but he’s often busy doing English (and sometimes Japanese) commentary during the tournament, so his coverage can be spotty. I watch his videos when they come out.

Latest video:

Sumo Prime Time YouTube channel

NHK World Sumo Content

I usually watch the Grand Sumo Highlights via NHK World, because 30 minutes is more convenient to me than watching the whole 2-hour do of Makuuchi (or even more time watching Juryo or even lower division bouts.)

They often make a playlist on their YouTube channel during the tournament, but it’s not there yet.

I cannot embed any NHK World YT videos (they don’t allow it), but you can check out their videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/@NHKWORLDJAPAN

I think they’re still trying to figure out this whole internet thing.

If you go directly to their website, you can find video on demand for sumo:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/sumo/

The Grand Sumo Preview for May 2026 is there right now. As usual, it has Hiro Morita, John Gunning, and Murray Johnson.

Other sumo-related shows that you can find on-demand are:

DOSUKOI Sumo Salon

The Sumo episode of Magical Japanese

Grand Sumo Legends

Blue Whirlwind: A Ukrainian sumo wrestler (documentary on Aonishiki)

Japan Sumo Association

This one is a big more difficult, because it’s a Japanese language channel on YouTube, but with translation tools now available (and, frankly, because most wrestling matches don’t really need translation, as one becomes familiar), it is not necessarily troublesome:

JSA YouTube channel

They know that some English language fans are coming to their site, so there is some English language notes on some of the videos.

Here is a recent video of pre-tournament practice:

Throughout the tournament, I go to the JSA match information pages (in English) the most often. The match-ups for Makuuchi for the first two days are already posted:

Day 1

Day 2

If you are interested in the ceremony surrounding sumo, here is the ring purifying ceremony for the May 2026 tournament, that just occurred:

GANBARIMASHOU!

HAKKEYOI!

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In case you didn’t see, the latest DOSUKOI Sumo Salon covers how the “styles” of sumo have been changing up in Makuuchi with the turnover with new guys coming in. It’s available on demand for the next year (until April 2027): The New Wave.

The problem I keep running into is that all the kimarite (winning moves) are translated into their meaning in English… and I have to remember that “frontal force out” is yorikiri.

Man, making sumo more accessible to English-speakers means I have to retranslate the terms back into the jargon I’m more comfortable with. HARRUMPH.

While DOSUKOI Sumo Salon tries to take “data-driven” approaches to sumo, some of the “data” they gather are more public-opinion polls, or gathering some silly-ish stats (in my opinion.) But this one had some interesting angles, in trying to capture what is changing with the new batch of guys at the top division (aka Makuuchi).

They have access to information that is generally not captured in the sumo databases, and that provides some interesting perspectives.

You should watch the episode — they discuss the relevance of the above stat. This can be compared with, I would argue, pro baseball players having collegiate experience, versus going from high school to the minor leagues.

Kimarite by Categories, March 2026

For convenience, this is a description of the categories:

1. Kihonwaza - these are the basic techniques and tend to be the most common. Yorikiri and oshidashi are in there. You will soon see these dominate.

2. Tokushuwaza - “Special techniques” - gee, that’s helpful. But it includes the very common hatakikomi “slap down” and hikiotoshi “pull down”.

3. Nagete - these are throws, like sukuinage and uwatenage.

4. Hinerite - “twist down” techniques, this includes moves like Midorifuji’s favorite: katasukashi

5. Kakete - these are the leg-trip/-pick techniques.

What is left over for “Other”: fusen (when the opponent is absent due to injury, etc.), hansoku (win due to a foul — usually pulling the top knot), hiwaza (“non-technique” — aka the loser usually screwed up rather than the winner did something affirmatively), sorite (backward body drops). There were no sorite at all this tournament, in any of the divisions, and only one hansoku. So pretty much all the “Other” are absences.

In March, by the way, the “pre-sumo” or Mae-zumo class has its entry bouts… but those aren’t given kimarite. I captured the matches in my spreadsheet, but they’re not in the above graphs.

As is usual, the “common” techniques of kihonwaza are most common in the lowest division of Jonokuchi. Juryo also has a pretty high ratio - partly due to so few matches are in Juryo.

Nagete, or throws, are pretty high up in the top division. Thanks, Hoshoryu and Kirishima (yeah, it’s not only them. We’ll look at that another time.)

Top 6 Kimarite Across the Divisions

What’s interesting is that it’s generally these 6 which are tops each time, but oshidashi and yorikiri often switch order, as do the bottom 3.

Remember the distinction between yorikiri and oshidashi: [as I had to in watching DOSUKOI Sumo Salon]

• Yorikiri: frontal force out — must keep hands on the mawashi while “escorting” the opponent out

• Oshidashi: frontal push out — must keep hands on the opponent’s body while pushing out of the ring, but not on the mawashi

In January, yorikiri clearly dominated, and now the two techniques are much closer. These two flip-flop all the time.

Between those top two kimarite, they represent almost 50% of the wins for almost all the divisions… except for Makushita.

The top 6 kimarite are also close to 80% of the wins for the lowest two divisions and for Juryo, and close to 70% for the other divisions.

That’s pretty dominant for winning techniques.

Descriptions of the remaining techniques:

• hatakikomi: slap down (tokushuwaza category) - often the winning technique when there’s a henka — one wrestler gets out of the way of an initial charge… but it’s a little more complicated than that.

• tsukiotoshi: thrust down (hinerite category)

• uwatenage: underarm throw (nagete category). This is the move that has nagete has such a relatively high percentage in Makuuchi for wins. Lots of different top-level rikishi use this and have it as a relatively high percentage kimarite for them. Hoshoryu’s uwatenage percentage is a little less than twice everybody else’s.

• yoritaoshi: frontal crush out (kihonwaza category) — one of Aonishiki’s top moves

I find the throws more interesting, and more varieties of kimarite in general more interesting.

But we all watch sumo for different things, perhaps.

Spreadsheet

2026 Mar Grand Sumo Tournament All Matches Kimarite

355KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Download

But first, a little amuse-bouche:

Height-Weight Scatterplot for May 2026 Grand Sumo Tournament

The final scatterplot, as the rikishi have done the Tokyo weigh-in.

I’m going to focus on the changes in weight between March and May for this post, so let me deal with that first. In my prior post:

I discussed how the banzuke and the weight-height distribution falls, so I won’t discuss it here. I will put the new distribution graphs up right now in quick succession.

The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.

(The color corresponds to bubble size, but the colors are similar, taken from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).

I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:

• Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)

• Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)

• Lower Maegashira (M09 - M17)

All the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, allowing you to see where the wrestlers are positioned in relation to height and weight.

Sanyaku May 2026

Upper Maegashira May 2026

Lower Maegashira May 2026

One comment: because I managed to get my first scatterplots in before the weigh-in, I got Wakanosho’s weight/height from March, so the next part he’s included in.

I had been tracking Ryuden because he does the hokey-pokey between Juryo & Makuuchi divisions, but Wakanosho hadn’t been on my radar yet. The timing was just right that I caught Wakanosho’s stats before they changed on the JSA website.

Weight change, March to May 2026

How much could these guys change in weight in two months, one might ask?

This is sumo — weight gain is part of their training.

Weight loss can be a bad sign, sometimes. It can indicate they’re injured, so they can’t keep up their muscle mass. It can indicate lapses in training.

But it can be a recalibration of what size they need to be for their techniques.

In any case, there were loads of weight changes between March and May:

Biggest gainers

7 kgs, or 15 pounds, is quite a lot to gain in 2 months.

In the case of Oho, Kinbozan, Shishi, and Onosato (I will stop at those 4) — those are BIG GUYS, so to a certain extent, from a percentage standpoint, gaining 10 pounds here or there is not really noticed.

But Tokihayate?

He’s one of the small guys.

Let’s go to the other end of the weight changers:

Biggest losers

Again, for the largest guys, 5kgs either way is not going to make a huge difference.

But with somebody like Tobizaru, weight loss may be a bad sign. Looking at my records from the past year, this weight loss sets him back to about where he was in March 2025. His record has not been great of late.

Spreadsheet

2026 May Grand Sumo Tournament Height And Weight 2026 04 29

254KB ∙ XLSX file

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First, a little look back on the last tournament:

Okay, enough of that.

Let’s look at our new banzuke!

Height-Weight Scatterplot for May 2026 Grand Sumo Tournament

This is preliminary — there will be another weigh-in before the May tournament begins, so the weights should move around a bit. I will look again in a week and see where they land.

I’m using my usual axes for weight and height, and it’s interesting what a wide spread we’ve got on both height and weight. But I do miss our cannonball types, like Takakeisho — short and heavy.

We do have Tobizaru and Ura as our shortest guys in Makuuchi currently, but with Midorifuji knocked out of the top division with his own health troubles, my own heart has been katasukashied (okay, the metaphor doesn’t quite work, but let’s go with it.)

For those unfamiliar with my graphs:

The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.

(The color corresponds to bubble size, but the colors are similar, taken from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).

I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:

• Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)

• Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)

• Lower Maegashira (M09 - M17)

All the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, allowing you to see where the wrestlers are positioned in relation to height and weight.

The May tournament is back in Tokyo, and they weigh the guys every time they’re in Tokyo (well, except I’m suspicious that some wrestlers/stables get a bye on this.) I’ve redone the graphs before the re-weighing, but will check the updated weights before the tournament.

Sanyaku May 2026

As has been the case since we’ve had Hoshoryu & Onosato as our Yokozunas, there are two “clusters” in the sanyaku: the big guys… and the not-as-big guys.

Congrats to Atamifuji and Kotoshoho on the promotion to Sekiwake!

Upper Maegashira May 2026

For the “rank-and-file”, there is not so much in the way of clusters.

Something to think about for a moment is that there had been much bigger guys, in the way of weight, once upon a time, in the top division. We rarely see anybody over 200 kg (440 pounds) in Makuuchi now — Ichinojo was over 200 kg, but that’s the most recent guy I can think of. The Hawaiian rikishi back in the day were ginormous, but that’s been decades since they fought.

We every so often see a video of an absurdly large guy in the basement-dwelling ranks getting tripped up by an 18-year-old just starting out, and it makes for amusement… but those guys don’t get very far. Most can’t move their bulk effectively. Merely being big isn’t helpful in-and-of itself.

That’s all to say, we’ve got several shorter guys here, across a wide range of weights… from Fujinokawa to Gonoyama.

Lower Maegashira May 2026

We’ve got newbie Wakanosho up from Juryo here — coming in at the shorter end.

And Ryuden is back again from Juryo - it’s like the hokey-pokey with him, jumping back and forth from Juryo into Makuuchi and back again.

I’m sad seeing Ura and Tamawashi down here. This is the lowest Tamawashi has been ranked since 2013. Ugh.

Anyway, here is a lovely video of Tamawashi making a holiday cake:

It’s all in Japanese, but you can just enjoy the beauty.

Spreadsheet

2026 May Grand Sumo Tournament Height And Weight 2026 04 27

248KB ∙ XLSX file

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But this is about the kinboshi given up by Hoshoryu and Onosato.

Even though Onosato pulled out after only 3 days and Hoshoryu was there the entire time, they both added the same number of kinboshi to their counts — 2 more:

• Onosato: 11

• Hoshoryu: 15

Both of them haven’t been Yokozuna long, which affects the results we’ll see below.

I’m including only Yokozunas from #45 (the first Wakanohana), as that’s the “modern” era of the tournaments, with 6 per year, etc. This was in 1958.

Let’s get to it.

Kinboshi count ranking, April 2026

Let’s start with the easiest: the kinboshi given up.

So here are the updated tables:

These top 10 are safe for now.

Onosato and Hoshoryu are climbing up the list:

And I’ll just mention it because I’m not showing that part of the table here, and you’re probably thinking it: Hakuho gave up 26 total kinboshi over his extremely long career as Yokozuna.

Kinboshi Percentage Ranking

This is what people have been complaining about with Hoshoryu and Onosato (and yes, I’ll show that).

But first, let’s look at the best (unchanged).

Hakuho’s percentage is impressively low, as is Tamanoumi’s. Except Tamanoumi held that percentage over only 2 years, with only 61 bouts against Maegashira rikishi in total.

Hakuho had a total of 484 matches against Maegashira-ranked wrestlers as a Yokozuna, over a much longer period. Whew.

Now let’s look at where Onosato and Hoshoryu are landing.

Ouch.

The JSA is definitely looking at these guys as an expensive proposition.

Part of the problem, of course, is that they have a relatively high number of their matches against Maegashira ranks to begin with.

Percentage of Matches which were against Maegashira Wrestlers

The thing is, a lot of those earlier wrestlers often had more Ozeki and other Sanyaku wrestlers to soak up the Yokozunas’ schedules in decades past.

Hard to give out gold stars if you don’t have many opportunities in the first place.

This percentage doesn’t move much, and given its nature, I don’t expect it to change drastically for either Onosato or Hoshoryu.

But I note that the guys on the top of this table tended to have the worst kinboshi percentages.

Which brings us to…

Correlation Graph

It’s not a strong correlation between the percentage of matches against Maegashira and kinboshi percentage, but it’s a fairly decent correlation.

Look, Terunofuji was fairly good as a Yokozuna, with a strong number of tournaments won, etc…. but he had a high kinboshi percentage.

Someone else showed me their own “kinboshi tax” metric in terms of the number of kinboshi Yokozuna give up in order to win yushos… except, Hoshoryu hasn’t won a yusho as Yokozuna… and some other Yokozuna had similar problems in that they were in an era of multiple Yokozunas. It makes it difficult to measure.

So I need to think about this a bit more. I’m keeping the simple metrics for now.

Spreadsheet

Yokozuna Kinboshi Data 2026 04 01

5.1MB ∙ XLSX file

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via reddit: Kirishima, who has been promoted back to Ozeki rank, has made his next promise to his 6-year-old daughter, who loves sumo

On the 25th, the Japan Sumo Association held a ranking committee meeting and an extraordinary board meeting for the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament, and decided to promote Sekiwake Kirishima (Otowayama), who won his third championship at the Spring Tournament, back to Ozeki. Kirishima, who is making a comeback after two years, received his promotion ceremony at his stable’s lodgings in Sakai City, where he was greeted by his stablemaster, Otowayama Oyakata (former Yokozuna Kakuryu), and an envoy from the association. He declared his determination, saying, “I will work hard to aim for even greater heights.” At the press conference after the ceremony, he also revealed a promise he made to his 6-year-old eldest daughter, Ayago.

　He promised his daughter they would celebrate together in the dressing room after he won the championship, which helped boost his comeback victory. “I kept one promise, so I’ve made another one,” Kirishima revealed, explaining the content of the next one: “Next time I win and have a parade, she told me, ‘You can’t be naked. You’ll catch a cold.’ I’ll be sure to remember that and do my best,” he said with a smile. After the final day of the tournament, Kirishima, due to time constraints, rode in an open-top car wearing only a sumo wrestling loincloth, which became a topic of conversation.

　Ayago-chan is a sumo enthusiast, and at the 2023 Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament when Kirishima won his second championship, her favorite sumo wrestler was not her father, but Ura. Kirishima also revealed that she receives enthusiastic advice from her, such as “Just push” and “Isn’t there a way to beat Onosato?”

Yeah, Onosato wasn’t around for most of the tournament, which I will not address in this post.

But let’s look at that “naked” Kirishima:

Italianozeki has the explanation:

Typically, a winning wrestler changes into a formal crested haori and hakama before boarding the parade car. However, due to the schedule being significantly delayed and the onset of rain, the plan was changed abruptly. Amidst a light drizzle and temperatures around 13°C (55°F), he paraded through the streets of Osaka topless. "Cold..." Kirishima muttered, breaking into a light jog to return to the dressing room after the event.

Meanwhile, Daiseizan, who had already prepared in the dressing room to serve as the flag-bearer, carried out his important duty while his formal kimono and hakama were soaked by the rain.

Well, he’s got to win a yusho again so he can be properly dressed.

Kirishima Rank and Weight Graph, Jan 2022 - Mar 2026

He’s had a somewhat steady rise in weight (okay, some variability, but they all get that), with a lot more variability with respect to rank.

No, I haven’t put in the ozeki promotion yet, because I chart the rank by tournament.

Let’s check out where Kirishima stands in the height-weight scatterplot for this tournament:

Similar to Hoshoryu, he’s one of the lighter guys. Not too short, but not the tallest.

Hoshoryu and Kirishima, both Mongolians, are not quite the same build, but they have some similarities, which we’ll see in the kimarite distribution. Mainly — that there’s a broad distribution. And, they love the belt and throws.

Kirishima’s Kimarite Profile

I’ve done a profile of Kirishima before, the last time he won a tournament:

As a seasoned wrestler, his kimarite distribution hasn’t changed much since November 2023. His win percentage is still excellent — 60% of his matches end in a win for him. Very nice.

Unlike the last time, I’m no longer using the Hellinger metric, mainly because I think people won’t understand it. I need to come up with a better metric. The sumo database uses KV50 (number of different kimarite in 50 matches) to try to capture diversity of technique.

Their measure of Kirishima’s KV50 is 16.5.

In contrast, Onosato’s KV50 is 9.7.

Hoshoryu’s KV50 is 18.5.

Ura’s is 15.8. Midorifuji’s is 15.6. Abi is 12.0. Shodai is 13.1. Shishi is 12.8.

I don’t think KV50 is getting at what I want to capture in technique uniqueness and diversity. Hellinger metric was closer, but it’s too confusing for people to interpret.

In any case, as with Hoshoryu, Kirishima favors throws… as many Mongolians do.

Tournament Wrap-Up Videos

Sumo Prime Time

Sumo Kaboom

Grand Sumo Breakdown

Spreadsheet

Kirishima 2026 03 29

42.8KB ∙ XLSX file

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Looks good to me.

Okay, enough frivolity, or it will be Day 2 of the basho before I get this up.

Height-Weight Scatterplot for March 2026 Grand Sumo Tournament

Here is the full scatterplot in all its glory. Alas, we lost our prior newbie outlier, Hatsuyama (he’s been kicked back to Juryo), but we got a new one in Fujiryoga. I’ll talk about the butterball when we get to the bottom of the banzuke.

With 42 wrestlers, there are often lots of overlapping points with all of them in one graph, so I’ll be splitting them into three groups below.

The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.

(The color goes along with bubble size, but the colors are similar, being from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).

I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:

• Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)

• Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)

• Lower Maegashira (M09 - M17)

All the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, allowing you to see where the wrestlers are positioned in relation to height and weight.

There was also a re-weighing between the /january (Tolyo) and March (Osaka) tournaments, and I’ll remark on the weight changes at the bottom of the post (and a few other things I saw in updating the data).

Sanyaku March 2026

We have a lot of the same guys in the Sanyaku between the January and March tournaments, so let me drop the January graph here:

We can see that Aonishiki has been sloooowly gaining weight, we’ve got a new heaaaaaavy guy Atamifuji, who has gained quite a bit of weight over the past year.

Let’s look at our next group down and we’ll see what we can see.

Upper Maegashira March 2026

So we’ve got a bunch of different clusters in the next ranks down.

There are a bunch of shorter guys with a range of weights (Ura, Fujinokawa, Hiradoumi, Churanoumi).

Wakatakakage is his own cluster by himself, I think.

Then what can be seen as either one or two clusters of taller, heavier guys, depending how much you want to split it.

Lower Maegashira March 2026

First, I am super-bummed about Midorfuji’s health situation, which sounds like congestive heart failure.

I think he should probably retire, considering. But we shall see. I don’t want to talk about just how bad the health situation is for most pro sumo wrestlers.

Let’s look at our two newbies to Makuuchi:

Fujiseiun is in the “regular sumo bod”, in terms of height/weight, but let’s get a good look at Fujiryoga:

He is not as big as Atamifuji — considerably shorter and lighter. But he is the heaviest in the lowest ranks, while we have other extremes in height with Kinbozan and Shishi, as well as other extremes in height and weight (excluding Midorifuji right now) in Tobizaru, Asakoryu, and Tokihayate.

In general, except when one of the lowest-ranked rikishi have a really strong run of results, you’re generally getting similarly-ranked wrestlers against each other in matches, so it’s interesting seeing such wrestlers of disparate sizes spar…. especially as a lot of those smaller guys have their own bag of tricks of dealing with the big guys.

Weight Changes… and Height Changes

I hadn’t been tracking Fujiryoga, so his weight change between January and March weigh-ins is omitted.

Interestingly, there is a bias of losing weight between the January and March tournaments.

But also, interestingly, I noticed some wrestlers’ official heights also changed… some by quite considerable amounts.

Huh? This isn’t for a wrestler, slowly, over time, between when he entered when he was 16 and later at an age of 20 years old. But between two months. And a near-thirty-year old gained 4 cm? or even 2 cm? Huh? What are y’all doing over there?

I’m going to guess that some sloppy measurement practices are involved.

Spreadsheet

2026 Mar Grand Sumo Tournament Height And Weight 2026 03 08

232KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Download

And one more:

Kimarite by Categories

For convenience, this is a description of the categories:

1. Kihonwaza - these are the basic techniques and tend to be the most common. Yorikiri and oshidashi are in there. You will soon see these dominate.

2. Tokushuwaza - “Special techniques” - gee, that’s helpful. But it includes the very common hatakikomi “slap down” and hikiotoshi “pull down”.

3. Nagete - these are throws, like sukuinage and uwatenage.

4. Hinerite - “twist down” techniques, this includes moves like Midorifuji’s favorite: katasukashi

5. Kakete - these are the leg-trip/-pick techniques.

The “other” includes fusen (when the opponent is absent due to injury, etc.), hansoku (win due to a foul — usually pulling the top knot), hiwaza (“non-technique” — aka the loser usually screwed up rather than the winner did something affirmatively), sorite (backward body drops). There was only one sorite in Sandamne, so let’s just move on.

Unlike with the height-weight scatterplots, which I stay on top of, I’m not that consistent with kimarite plots and analysis each basho, but that’s mainly because so many other blogs do look at tournaments overall.

In general, kihonwaza is more and more dominant at lower divisions compared to the top division — at Makuuchi, there are plenty of wrestlers who have to mix it up with non-yorikiri/oshidashi in order to win. I have to put this high-level kimarite spreadsheet together (downloadable below) in order to do further analysis.

Top 6 Kimarite Across the Divisions

Remember the distinction between yorikiri and oshidashi:

• Yorikiri: frontal force out — must keep hands on the mawashi while “escorting” the opponent out

• Oshidashi: frontal push out — must keep hands on the opponent’s body while pushing out of the ring, but not on the mawashi

In general, yorikiri is more common than oshidashi, except in Sandamne. That was just for January 2026, by the way.

In July 2024, the last time I did such a graph, it didn’t look like that at all:

The only thing one can indicate is that those two kimarite always dominate. Get the opponent out of the ring, either by shoving out, or grabbing the belt and escorting them out. That’s it.

Between those two, you get near 50% of wins for each division except for Makushita (only 40%) and Jonokuchi (60%).

The third most common kimarite, hatakikomi, is often associated with henka, but not only henka — it can be involved with the loser getting off-balance as well, and just tipping over their center of gravity. (I love the applied physics of these situations.) Hatakikomi (slap down) is in the Tokushuwaza category (special techniques).

Tsukiotoshi (“thrust down”) is part of the hinerite category (“twisty” techniques).

Uwatenage (“overarm throw”) is the most common of the nagete (throws).

Yoritaoshi (“frontal crush out”) is considered one of the common kimarite (kihonwaza), and comes in at #6 for this basho. Currently in the Sumo Database, yoritaoshi is at 4.5% of kimarite. It is also Aonishiki’s #3 kimarite, at 6.1% of his wins.

While the high-level kimarite by category may not be the most interesting way to look at a tournament, as I said, I need to pull this info before looking at the rikishi-level results.

One Last Valentine

Spreadsheet

2026 Jan Grand Sumo Tournament All Matches 2026 02 16

364KB ∙ XLSX file

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So no, this is not a list of who has won kinboshi, but comparing Yokozuna who have given up kinboshi.

It starts with Yokozuna #45, Wakanohana (the first of three… so far), who “ascended” to the title in January 1958.

This is important as the first 6-tournament schedule started in 1958. There were fewer tournaments per year before that, down to only 3 tournaments in earlier years. To make fairer comparisons, I went back to #45. (Also, I think that’s where JWags started in his kinboshi rundown.)

For all the following, I will show only parts of the ranking tables. The spreadsheet is downloadable at the end of the post, and contains all 31 Yokozuna being compared in the ranking.

Just so you know, as Onosato and Hoshoryu, being the only active Yokozuna, are the only ones racking up new kinboshi, so here are their current counts:

• Onosato: 9

• Hoshoryu: 13

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Kinboshi count ranking, February 2026

Let’s start with the easiest: the kinboshi given up.

This hasn’t changed since the last time. It’s a function of longevity…. kinda.

Because Hakuho was Yokozuna for a very long time, and he comes in at #12 with 26 kinboshi. And Hoshoryu is already at half of Hakuho’s count.

Kinboshi Percentage Ranking

Let’s look at the percentage of Maegashira bouts that ended in kinboshi for each Yokozuna. This gets rid of the bias from having a long reign as Yokozuna.

Low percentage end: [the same as last time]

Hakuho had 484 total bouts against Maegashira ranks… Tamanoumi, being a Yokozuna for only 2 years, had only 61 bouts against Maegashira.

Let’s look at the high end. Last time, Hoshoryu was at #26 and Onosato at #22.

At #25 & #27, yeah, they’re at the high end.

Percentage of Matches which were against Maegashira Wrestlers

This one is not a performance metric, but to give an idea how often the Yokozuna were up against Sanyaku (Komusubi, Sekiwake, Ozeki, and other Yokozuna) wrestlers as opposed to Maegashira.

Some Yokozuna didn’t have many Maegashira matches, as there were plenty of other Yokozuna and Ozeki to battle.

I haven’t figured out how to fold in this metric — some others have been trying to measure “banzuke difficulty” over the years — but I thought I’d put this up for informational purposes.

Now that there is a second ozeki, Hoshoryu and Onosato are sliding down this ranking list. If there comes a third Yokozuna this year, that will only help.

At the low end:

Last time, I explained the saga of Futahaguro, the most embarrassing Yokozuna choice. I believe the JSA learned that you don’t promote an ozeki to Yokozuna just because you feel like you have too many ozeki and only one Yokozuna. Because the guy they promoted had never won a yusho, though he had come close.

To say he lacked hinkaku is an understatement.

Correlation Graph

One of the things I have been testing is whether this percentage of Maegashira bouts is related to kinboshi percentage.

The R^2 is a little stronger than last time… but it’s still not that strong of a correlation.

Spreadsheet

Yokozuna Kinboshi Data 2026 02 07

5.09MB ∙ XLSX file

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But let me not get ahead of events.

That young man has been winning winning winning:

And he won again!

As with the November 2025 win, international outlets picked up Aonishiki’s win again:

25 Jan 2026, Yahoo Sports: Ukrainian sumo wrestler Aonishiki wins Emperor’s Cup for second time in a row

The decisive day of the Hatsu Basho tournament has taken place in Tokyo at Ryogoku Kokugikan Sumo Arena on 25 January.

Source: Champion, a sports news platform within Ukrainska Pravda’s holding company.

Details: Ukrainian sumo wrestler Arata Aonishiki, born Danylo Yavhushyshyn, came into the final day with a score of 11-3. The same score was held by Atamifuji.

The 195-kilogram Japanese wrestler defeated Oshoumi (10-5) to secure at least a play-off spot.

Aonishiki faced Kotozakura (8-7). If Danylo had lost, Atamifuji would have won the tournament. However, Yavhushyshyn dealt with the other rikishi fairly comfortably.

The championship was decided in an additional match between the two sumo wrestlers. The Ukrainian was considered the favourite, as he had won all three of their previous meetings.

Atamifuji seemed very close to success this time, but Aonishiki held on and then executed a winning throw against his exhausted opponent.

Aonishiki v. Atamifuji in Size

Using the most recent information from the last weigh-in…

In height, Atamifuji is only about 2 inches taller (5 cm).

But in weight, Atamifuji is currently the heaviest of all the Makuuchi wrestlers, and 55 kg (121 pounds) heavier than Atamifuji specifically.

As I mentioned in the last congrats post for Aonishiki, his size provides certain challenges to him. But he has been winning even so.

Aonishiki Rank and Weight Trajectory

He’s got one rank to go…. (knock on wood), but the weight is still low compared to many of the highest-level guys.

I’ll note that Hoshoryu also had trouble bulking up on his road to Yokozuna:

Hoshoryu had ups and downs, and he still has some issues there. Injuries don’t help.

As far as I can see, Aonishiki has not had injury issues, but it can be difficult to build the muscle mass he needs. It’s not simply about getting heavier. One needs to maintain speed and agility.

Aonishiki’s Kimarite

There are some differences from the last time we looked at Aonishiki’s kimarite, but that’s due to the “second tier” of kimarite (that is, non-yorikiri/oshidashi) all being very close to each other. So their ranking can easily change due to one win, given Aonishiki is still very early in his career.

Some of the same comments as last time pertain:

He seems most vulnerable to the types of attacks that would also get Ura — taking advantage of lower center of gravity.

Like the hatakikomi.

But something to keep in mind: so far, Aonishiki’s win percentage has been 79%.

Separately, look at those kimarite to the right - the ones that almost nobody wins by, and Aonishiki has racked up 3 or more wins that way:

• kirikaeshi (6 wins) - twisting backwards knee trip — I MEAN COME ON

• uchimuso (5) - inner thigh propping twist down

• kubinage (3) - head lock throw - THIS IS HOW HE WON AGAINST ATAMIFUJI IN THE PLAYOFF

• shitatedashinage (3) - pulling underarm throw - frankly, the most common of the bunch

Some of the weird kimarite comes from his very low center of gravity - of course, he is doing tripping techniques, and other leg-attacking kimarite.

But it does make one wonder how he ends up with head lock throws, given his low angles of attack - it must come from opponents with the bright idea: “HEY, I WILL MAKE HIM STAND UP HIGHER!”

Then he grabs you by the neck/head and throws you down. Bad idea.

Spreadsheet

Aonishiki 2026 02 05

38.6KB ∙ XLSX file

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Commentary/Coverage on Aonishiki and His Win

Sumo Prime Time!

Italianozeki’s Translation of Kaio’s Comments

31 Jan 2026, via X, Italianozeki: 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐀𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐤𝐢 𝐖𝐢𝐧𝐬 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐇𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐧’𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐎𝐧𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐨 𝐘𝐞𝐭): 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐳𝐞𝐤𝐢

The new Ozeki Aonishiki clinched his second championship by defeating Atamifuji in a playoff. The reason Aonishiki has never beaten Onosato comes down to the "pressure" from the initial charge.

Even if Aonishiki approaches with a plan to dig in, Onosato has the power to repel him. Aonishiki lacks strength there, perhaps because he needs more practice rounds to feel an opponent's pressure with his own body. That said, I have nothing harsh to say about Aonishiki. His sumo is fundamentally sound—staying low, moving forward, and not letting the opponent stand him up. It’s wonderful. He is also strong in "clutch" moments. If I had to find a flaw, he seems a bit vulnerable when he himself is lifted or has a double-underarm grip taken on him. His strategy against Onosato is a task for the future. He’s only been in this world for two years—to wrestle like that at this rank is unthinkable.

Next tournament will be a "Yokozuna Promotion Run" (tsuna-tori). Since he has produced results with consecutive championships, it’s not a matter of "too early" or "too late." Recently, there was debate over Hoshoryu’s promotion, while in the past, Takanohana’s promotion was deferred in a much stricter era. Naturally, if the results meet the criteria, there will always be debates about the "quality" of the sumo or suggestions to "wait one more tournament." Perspectives change with the times. Looking at it now, I might have been able to become a Yokozuna at least once in this era! (laughs).

Sumo Kaboom

Grand Sumo Breakdown

It’s the longest… so it comes last:

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Height-Weight Scatterplot for January 2026 Grand Sumo Tournament

You may notice a new outlier, with Hatsuyama — quite the string bean up there. I’ll talk about him in the banzuke breakout. Being a newbie, he’s in the lowest ranks.

With 42 wrestlers, there are often lots of overlapping points with all of them in one graph, so I’ll be splitting them into three groups below.

There’s a general diagonal ellipse of where the wrestlers fall, given there is a general shape to humans… the short guys tend to be lighter, the taller guys tend to be heavier. I keep track of who is gaining and who is losing weight, too. I will make some remarks on that below as well.

The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.

(The color goes along with bubble size, but the colors are similar, being from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).

I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:

• Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)

• Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)

• Lower Maegashira (M09 - M17)

All the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, allowing you to see where the wrestlers are positioned in relation to height and weight.

Because I will be using the same axes on all three groupings, there will be a bunch of white space in some of these.

Sanyaku January 2026

As I noted last time, we’ve been getting two clusters of wrestler types in the sanyaku: the heavy guys and the “light” guys.

Mind you, even Aonishiki, the smallest of all these wrestlers, at 182cm and 140kg, is still hefting an over-42 BMI. The “light” guys are only relative to the “heavy” ones. The lighter wrestlers are still over 6 foot tall, and over 300 pounds. They are big compared to “normal” people.

In case you were curious, Onosato’s BMI is near 51. Yes, I know BMI is a trash metric for anything here, but it’s a way to compare “heavy” for frame in comparing the wrestlers of different heights.

But unsurprisingly, the “lighter” guys tend to be “tricky” and get on the belt, try to throw, and do things other than straightforward shoving out of the ring. They don’t have the bulk to do that.

Upper Maegashira January 2026

As we go down the ranks, we get a wider diversity of heights and weights.

You get the super-tall Kinbozan as well as the heaviest Atamifuji; you get the short kings Ura and Fujinokawa.

Oh, and a remark: Hakuoho changed his shikona (ring name) to Hakunofuji. Isegahama are all -fujis now. (Except Enho).

Some of these guys have a tough time staying at these ranks, while others comfortably sit here (and collect kinboshi…)

Lower Maegashira January 2026

I circled the three guys who came up from Juryo.

The one circled in purple, Asanoyama, has been in Makuuchi before, having been an ozeki during the pandemic… until he got suspended for a year for breaking COVID protocols. He’s come back to Makuuchi in 2023-2024, but he’s had a rough time due to injuries. So he’s not really new, and he fits in the “big guy” cluster, as it were.

Asahakuryu looks to be about a median wrestler in terms of size.

Hatsuyama, on the other hand…

He doesn’t seem to have really bulked up like the other tall guys.

I looked at the Sumo Database page on Hatsuyama, which very intermittently records wrestler weights:

This guy just doesn’t want to gain weight. I get it.

Weight Change Since September 2025

The only time they really do weigh-ins are at the Tokyo tournaments, so the last weigh-in was in September 2025. Most of the time, the measured height doesn’t change (though that’s not always the case).

I don’t track all the Juryo wrestlers, but I had been tracking Asanoyama, so I knew his weight change (gain of 5 kg).

As you can see, most wrestlers recorded no change in weight. That may or may not be true.

But large weight changes are concerning, whether large losses or gains. The 11 kg loss for Ura (about 24 pounds) — that’s quite a lot, but it could be that he was making a correction to the gains he had been making over the years and getting to a weight more comfortable for him. He’s had yo-yo-ing of weight before. That said, a large drop in weight can indicate an injury.

At the other end, Nishikifuji gained 10 kgs. This is a large increase on top of where he was, and not a yo-yo-ing. We’ll see if he’ll be able to maintain this higher weight.

Last year I looked at largest gainers and losers, but I don’t think it ultimately signalled anything.

Still, it’s interesting to see someone like Hatsuyama who seems not to gain any weight, while others have gained weight to try to gain advantage (such as Hoshoryu):

A gain of 10 to 20 kg can make a large difference.

Spreadsheet

2026 Jan Grand Sumo Tournament Height And Weight 2026 01 04

211KB ∙ XLSX file

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I created the kinboshi ranking (from the Yokozuna side) in order to keep those rankings updated:

Let’s keep the stats updated!

It starts with Yokozuna #45, Wakanohana (the first of three… so far), who “ascended” to the title in January 1958.

This is important as the first 6-tournament schedule started in 1958. There were fewer tournaments per year before that, down to only 3 tournaments in earlier years. To make fairer comparisons, I went back to #45. (Also, I think that’s where JWags started in his kinboshi rundown.)

For all the following, I will show only parts of the ranking tables. The spreadsheet is downloadable at the end of the post, and contains all 31 Yokozuna being compared in the ranking.

Just so you know, as Onosato and Hoshoryu, being the only active Yokozuna, are the only ones racking up new kinboshi, so here are their current counts:

• Onosato: 6 (twice to Hakuoho, once each to Oho, Tamawashi, Kotoshoho, and Yoshinofuji)

• Hoshoryu: 10 (twice each to Abi and Wakamotoharu, once each to Aonishiki, Chiyoshoma, Hakuoho, Ichiyamamoto, Oho, and Takayasu)

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Kinboshi count ranking, Dec 2025

Let’s start with the easiest: the kinboshi given up.

Obviously, there is an aspect of longevity involved in giving up the most kinboshi.

Kitanoumi, the 55th Yokozuna, reigned from July 1974 to January 1985. He had 823 bouts as Yokozuna.

Kinboshi Percentage Ranking

Let’s look at the percentage of Maegashira bouts that ended in kinboshi for each Yokozuna. This gets rid of the bias from having a long reign as Yokozuna.

Low percentage end:

Tamanoumi was a Yokozuna for only two years: from 1970 to 1971. Not even two full years. January 1970 to September 1971. He gave up only 3 kinboshi total.

Hakuho, on the other hand, was Yokozuna for over a thousand bouts.

We also see that Kitanoumi was fairly low in his percentage of kinboshi, coming in at about 13%.

High percentage end: [where Onosato and Hoshoryu had landed at #29 & #30 last time]

Both Onosato and Hoshoryu have improved their percentages, with Onosato at #22 and Hoshoryu at #26. (It does help with wrestlers like Aonishiki being in sanyaku instead of Maegashira, to be sure.)

I will note that Terunofuji had a 22.7% kinboshi rate. Just noting in passing.

Percentage of Matches which were against Maegashira Wrestlers

As mentioned the last time I posted it, this is not a performance metric.

This gives an idea of how many bites at the apple Maegashira had with the Yokozuna, but also gives an idea of what the banzuke looked like for particular Yokozuna.

Some Yokozuna didn’t have many Maegashira matches, as there were plenty of other Yokozuna and Ozeki to battle.

I haven’t figure out how to fold in this metric — some others have been trying to measure “banzuke difficulty” over the years — but I thought I’d put this up for informational purposes.

Sigh. Yeah, here’s hoping the top of the banzuke starts filling up again. It’s been very thin.

This is what the lower end looks this — it’s no different than the last time:

Last time I said not to mention Futahaguro.

I will link to this entry on him here: Futahaguro Koji Fandom entry. Because that low percentage is related to why he was made Yokozuna, though he never won a tournament.

Kitao continued his impressive performance and produced two 10-5 records in his first tournaments as ozeki. Kitao continued his rapid rise with his third runner-up performance in May 1986, followed by a 14–1 score in July, his only loss being to Hoshi. He defeated yokozuna Chiyonofuji on the final day to force a playoff with him, which Kitao lost.

After the 14-1 result the Japan Sumo Association were faced with a difficult decision as there was only one yokozuna on the banzuke or rankings list, but five ozeki, with a sixth wrestler – Hoshi (who would become yokozuna Hokutoumi), winner of the March 1986 tournament, already performing to ozeki standards.

Basically, it was crammed with way too many ozeki at the top of the banzuke… and they felt like they had to promote somebody to Yokozuna… so they chose the guy who almost won the prior tournament.

It didn’t work out. At all.

The Association decided to promote Kitao to yokozuna and Hoshi to ozeki. Kitao had won 36 bouts in the last three tournaments and been runner-up in the last two, so the de facto promotional standard of “two tournament championships or the equivalent” was interpreted rather loosely. He was just 22 years old and the first person to be promoted to yokozuna without any top division tournament titles since Terukuni in 1942. The Sumo Association insisted that Kitao could no longer compete under his family name at such an exalted rank so he adopted the shikona of Futahaguro, the name being formed from those of two highly successful former yokozuna from his stable, Futabayama and Haguroyama.

The decision to promote Futahaguro backfired and he proved to be a great embarrassment to the sumo establishment. His debut as a yokozuna in the September 1986 tournament saw him pull out on the seventh day with only three wins, and after two runner-up scores in November 1986 and January 1987 a series of mediocre performances followed. His best result as a yokozuna came in November 1987 when he was runner-up for the seventh time, with a 13–2 record (losing at the hands of maegashira and also future professional wrestler, Takanofuji).

You can read the rest of how he got pushed out in December 1987 after he supposedly struck his stablemaster’s wife (among other abuse he dealt out to others).

He died in 2019 at the age of 55 from kidney disease.

In any case, there are problems with too many Ozeki, too.

Correlation graph update

I did this correlation graph last time, so let me update:

With the reduction of Onosato’s and Hoshoryu’s kinboshi percentages, the best fit line reduced in slope and the correlation/fit is even weaker than last time.

But again, note that those with the lowest kinboshi percentages tend to be up against Maegashira the least.

(Because of those ozeki-cram-packed banzuke?)

Poor Kisenosato and his outlier status.

Spreadsheet

Yokozuna Kinboshi Data 2025 12 06

5.06MB ∙ XLSX file

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Which fish are we looking at here?

Whether it’s the yusho fish or the ozeki fish, congrats to him!

It was such big news, the English-language news picked it up:

Yahoo/BBC News: Ukraine’s Aonishiki becomes sumo champion in Japan

A Ukrainian refugee has become the first person from his country to win an elite-level sumo tournament.

Danylo Yavhusishyn - known by his sumo ring name Aonishiki - arrived in Japan as an 18-year-old in 2022 after the Russian invasion of his country.

Now aged 21, he is the first Ukrainian to claim the prized Emperor’s Cup and the first European in almost eight years to do so.

He is now on the verge of being promoted to the second-highest rank of Ozeki, in what would be the fastest promotion in history.

Aonishiki finished the 15-day tournament in Fukuoka, Japan, with a record of 12 wins and three losses and went on to win the championship play-off against Yokozuna grand champion Hoshoryu, a 26-year-old Mongolian who won last month’s London tournament.

In his winning ceremony interview, Aonishiki was asked if he felt satisfied with his results after three years in sumo.

“No, I think this is just the beginning,” he replied.

Here are the Sumo Kaboom! Ladies interviewing Aonishiki back in September:

Aonishiki’s Unique Position and Trajectory

I mentioned in the pre-tournament post:

You will see that Aonishiki, the new sekiwake, is the shortest of the sanyaku.

Here he is sitting in the entire height-weight scatterplot for November 2025:

I know many of us would love to see him aim for Yokozuna (and I’m sure he will), but his size will make it challenging. That said, let’s check out his weight/rank trajectory:

One year ago, he had just finished the November 2024 tournament in Juryo (at J11) with a 10-5 record. You can see his profile at the Sumo Database here. In January 2025, he was still in Juryo.

And he’s ending 2025 as an Ozeki.

This is just incredible. Ever since entering Juryo, every tournament he had double-digit win records. Even Onosato stumbled a little (not much, to be sure) before making it to Ozeki.

As with Onosato, due to the rapidity of Aonishiki’s rise, I simply don’t have much of a history of tracking Aonishiki’s record. I don’t really measure any ranks below the top of Makushita. I had to dip into the bowels of Wikipedia, SumoDb, and other places to see if I could get better weight info, but I can’t.

Perhaps Aonishiki will put on more weight, as Hoshoryu did, in pursuing the Yokozuna rank. But he still is rather small compared to the other wrestlers at top ranks.

Aonishiki’s Kimarite

I am having a similar difficulty doing any kind of analysis with Aonishiki’s kimarite, though there is more of a record here as SumoDB does keep those bouts going back to his initial entry. But you’ll see a little bit of a problem…

So, when it comes to yorikiri and oshidashi, Aonishiki is quite normal. He is rather balanced between those two, not favoring one or the other.

It’s all the other kimarite for which he’s a bit unusual… and what’s really unusual is trying to analyze what kimarite he loses to.

Because he has only 31 losses so far in his record.

Two kimarite not listed above, to which he had 4 losses each:

• tsukidashi (frontal thrust out — losses to: Nagamura (in Sandamne), Kinbozan in Juryo, Daieisho, Yoshinofuji)

• tsukiotoshi (thrust down — losses to: three Juryo men - Oshoumi, Tochitaikai, Shishi, and Kotoshoho)

He seems most vulnerable to the types of attacks that would also get Ura — taking advantage of lower center of gravity.

And yeah, a henka might get him if he’s not paying attention. Watch out for those hattakikomi!

Spreadsheet

Aonishiki 2025 11 30

41.5KB ∙ XLSX file

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Other coverage of the win and promotion

Sumo Prime Time

Sumo Kaboom!

Grand Sumo Breakdown

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Let me jump right into my own visualization of the banzuke:

Height-Weight Scatterplot for November 2025 Grand Sumo Tournament

With 42 wrestlers, there are often lots of overlapping points with all of them in one graph, so I’ll be splitting them into three groups below.

There’s a general diagonal ellipse of where the wrestlers fall, given there is a general shape to humans… the short guys tend to be lighter, the taller guys tend to be heavier. I’ve had outliers in the past, but no major crazy beanpoles nor cannonballs right now.

The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.

(The color goes along with bubble size, but the colors are similar, being from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).

I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:

• Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)

• Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)

• Lower Maegashira (M09 - M18)

All the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, allowing you to see where the wrestlers are positioned in relation to height and weight.

Because I will be using the same axes on all three groupings, there will be a bunch of white space in some of these…

Sanyaku November 2025

You will see that Aonishiki, the new sekiwake, is the shortest of the sanyaku.

Last time, we had two major clusters of “light guys” and “heavy guys”… and they were somewhat balanced with 4 guys on the light side (Wakatakakage, Aonishiki, Kirishima, and Hoshoryu) and 3 on the heavy side (Takayasu, Kotozakura, and Onosato). There was a height component as well, with all the heavy guys at least as tall as the short guys.

Mind you, Aonishiki is the shortest of the guys — at 182 cm, he’s essentially 6 feet tall. He’s short only compared to the other guys. Onosato is 192cm — 10 cm taller — or 6’4”, so they’re all within 4 inches of each other in height.

Well… two of the light guys got knocked out of the sanyaku (bye bye Wakatakakage & Kirishima), Oho and Takanosho, two heavier guys, have entered the sanyaku.

There is a difference of at least 20 kg between the guys, or over 40 pounds. Onosato is the monster, of course, with a 50 kg gap between him and Aonishiki — an over-100-pound difference.

That makes for really interesting bouts. But as Wakatakakage and Kirishima (and Hoshoryu) can tell you, the weight difference can make it very difficult to deal with Onosato.

Upper Maegashira November 2025

Now here is where we see the very wide difference in weights and heights.

Atamifuji, at 192 kg (423 lbs), is the heaviest in Makuuchi.

Wakatakakage is the lightest at 137 kg (302 lbs).

So we’re covering about the same space in weight as sanyaku.

But the heights range from 175 cm (5’9”) with Ura up to 195 cm (6’5”) with Kinbozan.

In the September tournament, both Ura and Kinbozan were at Maegashira 8, but this time Ura has risen to Maegashira 3 after a 10-5 record in September, and Kinbozan has stayed at M08 after a 7-8 record. (He was on the West side, and stayed there.)

Just a quick comment on Ura’s performance last time: he did straightforward sumo, with 5 of his 10 wins being oshidashi. I think he focused on winning last time, instead of theatricality, and he got the wins.

Last note: Yoshinofuji had been Kusano in September, and had a shikona change before this tournament.

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Lower Maegashira November 2025

This one reaches farther into shorter and lighter areas with Midorifuji and Tobizaru.

While I love Midorifuji’s working of katasukashi, and Tobizaru’s antics are also interesting, their sizes make it difficult for them to rise too high (yes yes, Ura. URA IS MAGIC.)

Okay, Ura enjoys beer, too.

Still, being short, even when one has technique and some weight, there is difficulty in rising very high up the banzuke.

Spreadsheet

2025 Nov Grand Sumo Tournament Height And Weight 2025 11 08

189KB ∙ XLSX file

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Podcasts and Shows Preview/Banzuke Review

Grand Sumo Breakdown

Sumo Kaboom

Tomokaze and Oshoumi

Sumo Mainichi

It won’t let me embed the specific episodes, but the Oct 28 episode has them talking about the banzuke.

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I just picked up my 10th gallon of Worcestershire sauce from the post office yesterday over… oh, not many years. I like my French’s Worcestershire sauce… much like the Japanese and soy sauce, I (and a few other members of my family), we use Worcestershire sauce for things such as rice, vegetables, etc… mainly a way to convey salt & umami.

Sumo Kaboom on the London Event

A little clip on Instagram: [click on the picture to get there]

The full podcast episode here:

I think they had a good discussion about how this was kind of like the jungyo, that is the normal between-tournament sumo promotional tours around Japan — there are bouts, but they’re not “real”.

The guys absolutely do not want to get injured when the point is to show off aspects of sumo, but one’s rank (and one’s salary/big prizes) are not dependent on the outcome. They may do some showy moves, but it’s going to be somewhat “scripted”.

The thing is that most of us foreign (that is, non-Japanese) fans rarely see any jungyo events. So people were getting salty about it. But I thought it was a lot of fun.

WE’RE GETTING A REAL TOURNAMENT IN JUST A COUPLE OF WEEKS, SO CALM DOWN.

Sumo Prime Time

The real star of the live London events was Hiro Morita, as he was explaining sumo basics to a crowd where maybe half didn’t know much. There were obviously a lot of people in the crowd who were very familiar with sumo, but still, you know they probably brought along some friends and family. Each night,

Hiro explained not only the basic rules of sumo, but also aspects of the culture and ritual surrounding sumo, which was good.

Royal Albert Hall Days 4-5 Videos

JSA’s London Capsule Video

It’s not an official sumo event until the JSA puts out their video montage!

Pictures of Prizes!

Everybody loved the pictures of Hoshoryu with big stuff. (No, no macaron.)

A different angle…

Ura got the Audience Award!

Japanese Ambassador on the Sumo Extravaganza

Hiroshi Suzuki is the Japanese Ambassador to the UK, and he is the best.

He is like the Paddington Bear of ambassadors.

That is according to Marianka Swain of The Telegraph.

He had plenty to share from the visit of the top sumo wrestlers.

The Japanese Embassy to the UK is having an Art of Sumo exhibit:

Open weekdays, 09:30am - 5:30pm
Closed weekends, 13 October & 24 November
Please check opening times in advance on our Eventbrite page (advance bookings can be made but walk-ins are also welcome)
Admission is free but please show photographic identification on entry

Sumo’s displays of immense strength, deep spiritual meaning and the strong sense of tradition have long captivated audiences.

So much more than just a wrestling bout, sumo has a storied history from its early ritualistic beginnings, to Imperial patronage and later as the national sport of Japan which is celebrated internationally.

This exhibition aims to convey the rich history and distinctive visual imagery of sumo showing the many the long-standing traditions and rituals still observed today.

I shared some of these pictures in a prior post, but let’s grab all the pics:

JSA’s Chairman Hakkaku had been at the 1991 London event, as Yokozuna Hokutoumi.

Yes, that’s Paddington Bear.

Art for London Event Merch

There were two series of art for the event merch: froggies

Link to Ezen Design to the sumo frog. The other frogs are also there.

Great Wave of Sumo in London:

Link to Ezen Design.

Final Pictures!

And one final gallery of pictures:

Enjoy!

And next stop… November banzuke!

Compilation of the London Sumo Posts

• 11 Oct 2025: Happy September Win, Onosato... and Enjoy the London Trip! - this has some of the pre-London info

• 14 Oct 2025: London Sumo Spectacular! Starts Tomorrow, Oct 15! At the Royal Albert Hall! (With Where to Watch Online)

• 15 Oct 2025: More 2025 London Sumo Extras! October 15

• 18 Oct 2025: Even More 2025 London Sumo Extravaganza!

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