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Kyushu Basho Day 13 Comments
The last few basho I've figured out that I can find the bouts first on the Sumo Association's official YouTube channel. They post what they think are the top 12 bouts from the day, and it's usually 10 Makuuchi bouts and then two Juryo buts involving rikishi they'd really like the fans to start cheering for. On Day 13, I went to YouTube first thing and scanned the bouts available to me, and then I also looked at the number of streams for each bout. The Onosato - Aonishiki matchup was easily the number one bout with the Hoshoryu - Kotozakura matchup coming in second place.

As of 5:30 AM Japan time on Saturday morning, the Onosato bout had exactly 100K views and Hoshoryu's bout had 86K views. Everything else was in the low 30's or the 20's...that is until I scrolled all the way right and saw another bout with 48K views. The bout involved none other than Asanoyama who is currently fighting from the J4 slot. He was coming into the day with a 9-3 record, and his opponent today was J10 Tamashoho, a dude who briefly made a Makuuchi appearance earlier this year.

The bout itself was so unstable, so it's not worth breaking down, but I will mention that Tamashoho did execute an unnecessary 180, and then this was his footwork at the edge:



Tells you all you need to know right there. You look at Tamashoho's hands up so high and his legs nearly doing the splits, and you know that the bout was thrown in Asanoyama's favor. I mean, Juryo bouts are thrown all the time, but the point is that this bout was the 3rd most popular of any bout fought on the day. Does that really make sense in a sane world?

Asanoyama is 31 years old. His body is held together with chicken wire and duct tape, and the dude was suspended from sumo for a spell for partying during Covid lockdowns and then lying about when questioned by sumo officials. And yet...he seems to be the third most popular rikishi right now behind the two Yokozuna.

It's been obvious that the Association has been pushing Yoshinofuji as a new star in sumo, but the number of streams from his bout against unknown Tokihayate? 32K.

I just find it incredible that this is all the Sumo Association has to work with, and trust me, they're going to milk Asanoyama until he can barely walk anymore. With his...uh...win today, he now stands at 10-3 and has a shot to yusho. Regardless of that, the Association just wants him back in Makuuchi for January because they know he'll increase fan interest, and they need anything they can get.

Before we get to the Makuuchi bouts, as they were panning up close on Asanoyama prior to his bout today (I was so curious why Tamashoho wasn't getting equal attention. Oh right), I noticed a guy sitting in the front row with a cartoon bird sticker stuck to his shirt.



The more I looked around the suna-kaburi, the more I realized that all of the men had cartoon stickers on their shirts, so the question is: is it ever acceptable for a grown man to wear a sticker on his shirt? I mean, I know this is Japan, but still...

Come to think of it, I was photographed once as an adult with a sticker on my shirt, but I wore that mother with pride:



Okay, let's turn our attention back to the Day 13 Makuuchi bouts by reviewing the leaderboard:

10-2: Onosato, Hoshoryu, Aonishiki
9-3: Tokihayate

M14 Tokihayate was paired against none other than M5 Yoshinofuji, and Tokihayate stood straight up at the tachi-ai leaving himself extremely vulnerable, but Yoshinofuji couldn't take advantage, and so when the two finally stuck in the clinch, this was the scene:



You'll notice that Yoshinofuji's feet are aligned while Tokihayate has his feet positioned properly not to mention the nice attacking stance. And what you don't see on the other side is that Tokihayate had the right outer grip. I mean, in a real bout, it's usually ballgame at that point.

Instead of attacking, however, Tokihayate just stood there as Yoshinofuji executed a maki-kae with the right, and it was pretty slow as Yoshinofuji backed himself all the way to the edge, and Tokihayate could have easily rushed him out during the melee, but he wasn't applying pressure, and so Yoshinofuji thought about going for a left scoop throw. Tokihayate was positioned to counter with a right outside belt throw, which would have created a nage-no-uchi-ai, but Tokihayate forgot to throw. Well, he didn't forget, but you know what I mean. With Tokihayate leaving himself vulnerable, Yoshinofuji was still unable to defeat his foe, and so Tokihayate finally backed over in front of the chief judge and stepped across with Yoshinofuji in tow.

Once again, we witness a bout of sumo where Yoshinofuji's sumo skills (or lack thereof) are exposed. It's how I knew his wins over Onosato and Aonishiki were fixed and scripted. You get him in a bout like this where he doesn't know what's coming, he looks awful even when his opponent is mukiryoku as Tokihayate was today. The end result is both dudes sitting on 9-4 records with Tokihayate getting booted from the leaderboard.

It's all for a good cause of course. Yoshinofuji is now half as popular as Asanoyama.

Moving all the way up to the end of the day, Yokozuna Hoshoryu took on Kotozakura, and this was one of the better fought bouts of the whole tournament. The two struck nicely chest to chest with both fishing for inside positions, and after quickly trading places in the dohyo, Hoshoryu came away with a right inside position and left outer grip. He quickly forced his foe sideways near the edge, but he stopped short keeping Kotozakura in the bout. There's no doubt the Yokozuna could have ended it right there, but he was all about putting on a show.

After letting Kotozakura firm up with a left outer of his own, the two were now in the gappuri-migi-yotsu position, and it was pretty cool to see Kotozakura try and set up a forceout of his own and the smaller Hoshoryu rebuff him at each turn. After 15 seconds or so when it was clear that Kotozakura was gassed, Hoshoryu began to set up a right inside belt throw, and I wish he would have followed through on it just to show people what an actual throw looks like. Maybe that's why he pulled back on it...don't want to show the other fellas up ya know and create unrealistic expectations. After letting Kotozakura (7-6) out of the throw, Zak went for a sheepish pull, which was really his way of saying, "I surrender," and Hoshoryu graciously forced him back and across from there.

The win moves Hoshoryu to 11-2 and keeps him in a tie for first place with the winner of the next bout.

Said bout featured Onosato vs. Aonishiki, and this one was a complete dud. Instead of hunkering down at the tachi-ai, Aonishiki stood upright and kept his arms out wide giving Onosato what he wanna. Problem was that Onosato couldn't set anything up from the initial charge even against a mukiryoku dude, and so he walked right into a left outer grip in favor of Aonishiki. You could see Aonishiki flinch on a left outside belt throw due to muscle memory, but he quickly abandoned it because it likely would have worked. With Onosato still not pressing, Aonishiki just dove backwards out of the ring dragging Onosato into his body with that left outer grip.

I think the Ukrainian was thinking that Onosato would have responded better, but Yoko Ono just flopped to the dirt and touched down before Aonishiki landed beyond the straw. This was one of those subjective bouts where one dude (Onosato) clearly touched down first but the other dude (Aonishiki) had already broken the plane of the dohyo. I've seen the call go both ways, but they didn't even call a mono-ii here. Everyone knew that the bout was fixed in Onosato's favor, and so the judges just sat on their hands.

There was really no sumo to break down from either party. Aonishiki's sumo was uncharacteristic on purpose, and Onosato couldn't do anything against the Sekiwake even though Aonishiki was mukiryoku and vulnerable. Here's a question:  how do you win by yori-kiri and end up face planting across the straw with your opponent collapsing on top of you as seen in the pic above?

You never see that happen in a practice tent, and so when you see it during a hon-basho, you know the bout was fixed.

The end result is Onosato's joining Hoshoryu at 11-2 while Aonishiki is bumped down a step to 10-3. Tokihayate self immolated earlier, so the leaderboard heading into Saturday is as follows:

11-2: Onosato, Hoshoryu
10-3: Aonishiki

Looking ahead to tomorrow, Onosato draws Kotozakura and just by the content of sumo today from both parties, you'd have to give the edge to Kotozakura. I think the bout will be fought straight up, but there's also the La La Land scenario where Kotozakura lets Onosato win tomorrow, Hoshoryu lets Aonishiki win tomorrow, and then Aonishiki lets Kotozakura pick up his eighth win on senshuraku to avoid kadoban status in January.

In that scenario, everyone wins something except Hoshoryu, and he doesn't care as he can continue to live of the fatted Japan calf for as long as he likes.

If the two bouts are straight up, I'm going to say 55-45 in favor of Kotozakura, and it's 90-10 in favor of Hoshoryu.

I really wanted to do all the bouts at least one day this basho, but time won't allow today. Still, it's worth commenting on one more bout...the M4 Tamawashi - M1 Wakatakakage matchup. From the tachi-ai, Tamawashi came with a blistering tsuppari attack, and WTK had no answer. Tamawashi had a chokehold with the right and then the left as he bullied Wakatakakage back and across the straw without argument. It was such a beautiful display of sumo, and nobody on the banzuke can stop it let alone mimic that same charge.

The contrast between that win today by Tamawashi and all of Onosato's oshi-dashi wins is so obvious, and I wonder how many people really clue into it. Come to think of it, when was the last time Onosato grabbed anyone by the neck? I know where Donald Trump likes to grab 'em, but what about the neck?

That sumo today from Tamawashi was real Yokozuna sumo, so I thought it was worth pointing it out. And of course, Tamawashi is just 6-7 after the win. Yeah, right.

Kyushu Basho Day 12 Comments
I finally looked at the wires yesterday because I wanted to see if Aonishiki was up for Ozeki promotion this basho (he is). The unwritten rule is that a guy must win 33 bouts over the course of three consecutive basho fighting from the Sanyaku, but they can make an exception if the dude wasn't ranked in the Sanyaku yet fought a Sanyaku-like schedule. In July, Aonishiki was ranked at M1 and did indeed fight a Sanyaku-like schedule on his way to an 11-4 mark, and so I wanted to verify whether or not he is an Ozeki candidate.

In reading up on the dude, he's poised to set a new record for four straight double-digit win tournaments starting with his debut basho in Makuuchi. Aonishiki's sumo is not flashy, but he excels in keeping his hips low and fighting from a defensive posture that none of the Japanese rikishi can solve, and that's largely why he's on the verge of setting this new record:  his Japanese competition can't beat him. If he can get some of the Mongolians to let up for him, he can easily post double-digit wins, and that's exactly what he's doing.

By the end of Day 12, the only opponent Aonishiki's faced so far who has a winning record is Kirishima, and you may remember that bout on Day 1 where the two grappled for about seven seconds before Kirishima just did a useless 180 letting Aonishiki push him out from behind.

On Day 10, Tamawashi kept his hips high and arms wide and backed out for Aonishiki in a four-second bout where the Mongolian was mukiryoku.

Okay, that's two cheap wins in his favor, but those wins are neutralized by Aonishiki's letting up for Wakatakakage (a bad henka from WTK that he purposefully walked into), and then Aonishiki let Yoshinofuji beat him as well.

Those were the four Aonishiki bouts this basho that were yaocho, and everything else has been straight up. And this intro is not to belittle Aonishiki. It's to belittle the Japanese rikishi and to praise Aonishiki for taking advantage of the weak field around him.

Aonishiki's stablemaster is the former Aminishiki, and back when gachinko rikishi were still identified in sumo, Aminishiki was one of the few known gachinko rikishi left. I think that attitude has been applied to Aonishiki as well where the stable is doing things the right way. Now, the popularity of sumo these days depends on serious yaocho, and the Aminishiki/Aonishiki camp has been complying when necessary, but on the whole, this rise to the Ozeki rank has been very clean and well deserved.

I would stop short of calling it historic just because the competition has been so weak, and if you look at the recent "historic" records broken like the first rookie to yusho in 100 years (what the hell ever happened to Takerufuji??) or Onosato only needing 9 basho to make it to Yokozuna while the previous record holders were tied at 24, any record in sumo set these days is entirely meaningless.

And that's all I have to say about that. Let review the Day 12 leaderboard at the start of the day:



Fighting first from that list was M15 Nishikifuji who was paired against M8 Ichiyamamoto, and after trading tsuppari from the tachi-ai, it was evident that Ichiyamamoto was looking to set up a pull. He first retreated a bit to his right and then over to the other side of the dohyo looking to pull, but Nishikifuji really couldn't connect on a thrust that made a difference. He was sorta moving forward, but he was tentative unlike Ichiyamamoto who signaled his intent to pull early and stuck with it. After about seven seconds of unsound sumo, Ichiyamamoto moved back to his left and pulled an out of sorts Nishikifuji out of the dohyo.

This was a bad bout of sumo start to finish, and nobody wanted to win it straight up. Normally when a yusho contender has his opponent going for pull after pull, he takes advantage and easily scores the oshi-dashi win, but Nishikifuji was not a contender thus the result we got today.  At 8-4 now, Nishikifuji is thankfully knocked off of the leaderboard for good while Ichiyamamoto picks up kachi-koshi at 8-4.

M14 Tokihayate drew M6 Atamifuji, and the two hooked up in migi-yotsu with Atamifuji openly refraining from grabbing a wide open left outer grip. As the two jockeyed around the ring, Atamifuji let Tokihayate get a left outer instead, but the smaller Hayate couldn't do anything with it. Finally, Atamifuji had no choice but to grab a left outer of his own, but he waited for Tokihayate to make the first move, which came in the form of an inside belt throw with the right. It barely fazed the Hutt, and Atamifuji was in prime position to attack from the center of the dohyo, but he let Tokihayate dictate the next move, which came in the form of another right inside belt throw, but this move was more desperate and Tokihayate had zero leverage on the throw. Instead of countering with a left kote-nage, Atamifuji simply tiptoed his way to the straw and twisted his body across as if he had been thrown. A big as if.

I mean look at that pic at the edge between these two. Tokihayate has zero leverage on that throw, and you're telling me he was able to throw a Hutt across the straw against his own will with that pathetic position? Whatever. Tokihayate's 9-3 is pointless at this juncture, and if I had it my way, I'd keep the leaderboard to just the two-loss rikishi.

It's felt like this entire basho they've been trying to make M5 Yoshinofuji's name change meaningful here in Kyushu, and he checked in today as the final three-loss rikishi. He was dealt Kotozakura, which was a tricky matchup because neither of these dudes had a good reason to sell their bout. Kotozakura is going to face the three guys on the two-loss tier starting tomorrow, and he's the underdog in each of those contests, so if he wanted kachi-koshi, he could ill-afford to lose today's bout.  For that reason, the match was straight up from both parties, but it was so poorly fought.

After a bland tachi-ai, Yoshinofuji, did nothing with his arms and actually moved a bit right and back a half step fishing for a pull.

If we stop the tape right there, where did Yoshinofuji's magical sumo go from the two previous days?? You remember he "beat" Onosato with a quick moro-zashi on Day 10, and then he "bested" Aonishiki yesterday with an oshi attack. What happened to the double-edge sword sumo? What happened was the bout wasn't fixed coming in, and so Yoshinofuji panicked and was thinking trickery from the start. All this against one of the easiest guys to exploit from the tachi-ai and get to the inside. Just ask Ura.

When Kotozakura didn't bite on Yoshinofuji's tachi-ai, it was Zak's turn to go for a pull as Yoshinofuji looked to square back up, and it was one of those do-or die moves that required every centimeter of real estate for Kotozakura to drag Yoshinofuji down before stepping out. The margin here was razor thin, but Kotozakura was just able to keep his left heel from touching across until Yoshinofuji scraped the dirt with his left forearm as he broke his fall. The emotion here on Yoshinofuji's face was real as he looked up with pleading eyes at the ref's gunbai, but he lost by a few millimeters. It was actually kind of refreshing to see raw emotion for once after a loss as opposed to the fake emotion displayed by the Mongolians after a thrown bout where they cock their head as if to say, "What just happened?"

Real sumo happened here, and it was nice to see it although the technique from both parties was terrible. I really couldn't find a positive thing to say about either of these guys' sumo. Both tachi-ai were weak, and both dudes were looking pull first. The end result is Yoshinofuji's falling out of contention at 8-4 while Kotozakura picks up a legit win in moving to 7-5.

The previous bout featured Sekiwake Aonishiki taking on M4 Ohshoma, and Aonishiki assumed his usual defensive posture from the tachi-ai where he keeps his hips low and dares his opponent to come in close. For Ohshoma's part, he was defensive too putting an arm forward in a defensive thrusting stance, but he quickly went for a pull from there. Aonishiki wasn't prepared to push him across in one fell swoop, but he capitalized by getting the left arm firmly inside, and from there he tested the sukui-nage, soto-gake, and dashi-nage waters all with that inside left belt grip. Ohshoma persisted defensively, but the Ukrainian had him on the run and was finally able to twist him down near the center of the ring. The fall looked a bit weak to me, but whatever. Aonishiki's sumo has never been flashy because it doesn't need to be, and he dictated everything start to finish in improving to 10-2. As for Ohshoma, he falls to an anemic 3-9.

Moving up to the Yokozuna tier, Onosato faced Sekiwake Ohho, and Ohho's tachi-ai was perfect as he stood Yoko Ono straight up and set himself up for the inside right left outer grip position. But then he conveniently forgot to grab the left outer. I mean, look at this pose one second after the initial charge:



Onosato's body is completely vertical with his hips extremely high and a right inside that's just forearm deep. Ohho's got his face burrowed into Onosato's shoulder with the right inside, and look at that left hand...right at the cusp of Onosato's belt. And don't overlook the footwork from both parties. Onosato's feet are perfectly aligned (the cardinal sin in sumo) while Ohho's got the uwate-side foot forward and the other foot back grounding himself to the dohyo. I mean, that is absolute perfection from Ohho.

But all good thing must come to an end, so Ohho abandoned that perfect start and moved left with a meaningless swipe, and as Onosato looked to square up, Ohho actually caught him with the right hand in a chokehold to where Yoko Ono was looking at the ceiling again. Despite that grip, Ohho just moved back to the edge keeping his body square with his opponent and compromising his right leg by putting his knee forward (the most useless move in sumo), and the cheap push-out from Onosato was inevitable.

One of the biggest reasons why I even started Sumotalk to begin with was because the explanations given at the end of the bouts didn't match the action in the ring. I mean, that pic above a second after the tachi-ai says it all, and yet, it will go completely overlooked in the post-bout analysis as they say trite phrases like "Onosato's bariki was on display here," or "Onosato was patient in this one." Patient shmatient. The dude is a total fraud and you only need to analyze the actual sumo. Despite all that, Onosato finds himself at 10-2 now while Ohho takes the pay off in falling to 4-8, which means he'll lose his Sekiwake status come January.

The final bout of the day featured Yokozuna Hoshoryu vs. Old-musubi Takayasu, and when I looked at the YouTube numbers before watching any of the bouts, I was surprised to see that this bout had nearly 50% more views than the Onosato-Ohho matchup around midnight Japan time. I'm not sure what the reason for that was, but the Yokozuna stood Takayasu up nicely from the tachi-ai before moving right and putting his right hand at the side of Takayasu's belt poised to grab and early outer grip, but Hoshoryu pulled that hand back for no other reason than to make the bout look competitive. Competitive it wasn't as the two traded tsuppari with Hoshoryu scoring on thrust after thrust to Takayasu's neck and the side of his face. The two danced around and around the ring with Hoshoryu wielding the beating stick the entire way, and then he found his left arm at the side of Takayasu's belt again. He refused the easy outer a second time, but he had the left arm inside, and from there, he propped Takayasu upright and forced him across the straw and down to the arena floor.

Hoshoryu didn't exactly bully Takayasu down to the floor. Rather, the former Oldzeki just collapsed because he was so gassed. Sheesh, the dude took a beating here all in the name of trying to make the bout look competitive, but Hoshoryu opened a can of whoopass in this one. While we're on the topic, has Onosato ever bullied a guy around the ring for 12 seconds like that? Just asking for a friend.

Hoshoryu moves to 10-2 with the nice win while Takayasu falls to 5-7, and that sets up the following leaderboard heading into Friday:

10-2: Onosato, Hoshoryu, Aonishiki
9-3: Tokihayate

As mentioned previously, Tokihayate is useless, which is why I've started ghosting out his name there, and it will all come down to the threesome on the two-loss tier. Essentially, we've got a tomoe-sen that will span the final three days with Onosato and Aonishiki dueling tomorrow while Hoshoryu draws Kotozakura.

Aonishiki will then fight Hoshoryu on Saturday with Onosato facing Kotozakura, and then Hoshoryu and Onosato will duke it out on Sunday (look at me pretending as if it will be a straight-up bar brawl) with Aonishiki facing Kotozakura.

I mean, that's how the final two bouts each day for the rest of the tournament SHOULD play out, but it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to give Kotozakura a break. Actually, Kotozakura can clinch kachi-koshi by beating Onosato on Saturday, and I'm positive that bout will be straight up. It'll look like the Kotozakura - Yoshinofuji bout today, and we'll see who is the better puller of the two.

If I had to guess, I think Aonishiki is going to let up for Onosato tomorrow but we'll see. I think Hoshoryu is going to choose to beat Kotozakura. There's definitely a path to where both Yokozuna meet on senshuraku for the yusho; Aonishiki gets promoted to Ozeki with at least 11 wins; and Kotozakura walks away with a kachi-koshi.

Sumo loves happy endings.

Kyushu Basho Day 11 Comments
Through the first 9 days, this basho had no variety to it and no spark. I know the Sumo Association watches the number of streams online and they also get the viewership numbers from NHK each day, and they will absolutely make decisions mid-basho based off of those numbers. The fickle leaderboards in Week 2 are a great example. If they only post it down to one off the lead and there are only three or four guys left on Day 10, then we need to post it two losses off the lead to get more bodies on the board. If we end up having six guys within one-loss of the lead, we don't need to go down to two-losses off the lead the next day. In other words, the standard is whatever most benefits the Sumo Association and gives the actual appearance of a yusho race. By Day 7, the leaderboard was already so thin that I knew some manipulation was greatly needed to make it appear as if an exciting yusho race was brewing, and that's been taking place each day since the weekend.

The leaderboard at the start of Day 11 needed to go down two-losses deep, so this is what it looked like at the end of Day 10:



Let's follow this version of the leaderboard in chronological order meaning we start with M14 Tokihayate paired against M13 Gonoyama. Gonoyama crushed his foe off of the starting lines with a nice forearm to the chest, and Gonoyama had Tokihayate back near the straw in a second flat. He let up, however, and allowed Tokihayate to execute a rather weak swipe to the side, and Gonoyama must have been thinking, "That's it??". Yes, that was it, and so Gonoyama drove Tokihayate clear across the dohyo to the other side, but instead of finishing his foe off in short order, Gonoyama literally stopped and hunched himself over as he stared towards the outside of the ring, and with Tokihayate standing to the right of Gonoyama, the fake leader barely touched the back of Gonoyama's belt, and Gonoyama just flopped forward and down across the straw. Sheesh, now I know why I've been ignoring this basho so long. Tokihayate stays in contention...I guess...after paying Gonoyama (6-5) off to take an obvious dive. At 7-3 now, there's no way Tokihayate is going to yusho, and after all the events played out today, there is no longer a need for him as filler on the leaderboard.

Up next was M15 Nishikifuji welcoming M12 Fujinokawa, and Fujinokawa easily won the tachi-ai by getting moro-zashi against a hapless Nishikifuji. NFJ chose to move laterally to his right putting his back against the edge, and instead of maintaining his forward momentum won at the tachi-ai, Fujinokawa purposefully brought his right arm from the inside to the outside and waited for Nishikifuji to recover. Nishikifuji was out of sorts at this point, so it took him a bit to mount a half-assed charge, and as he did, Fujinokawa pretended to go for a maki-kae with the same arm (his right arm as pictured at right) that he PURPOSEFULLY pulled out of the inside position two seconds ago. That fake maki-kae and slow backwards retreat was just a ploy to leave himself vulnerable, but because Nishikifuji had created none of this forward momentum, he couldn't finish Fujinokawa off, and so Fujinokawa finally turned to his left and stepped his right foot across the straw giving Nishikifuji the cheap win. It's bouts just like these first two that have made sumo so unwatchable in my opinion as Nishikifuji loses the tachi-ai badly and does nothing to contribute to his win in moving to 8-3 while Fujinokawa takes the cash in falling to 6-5.

Moving way up the banzuke, let's next touch on Sekiwake Aonishiki taking on M5 Yoshinofuji. Aonishiki gave a master class here on exactly what to do in order to lose, and that is to stand upright at the tachi-ai, keep your arms and hands wide, and slowly back up allowing your opponent to execute a forward attack (see pic at left). It's actually the template that seemingly all of Onosato's opponents used during his 9-0 start, and the result here was Yoshinofuji acting like a Yokozuna in dispatching a willing Aonishiki in about three seconds. That's two days in a row where Yoshinofuji has executed sound sumo:  a yotsu attack against Onosato yesterday and the oshi attack today against Aonishiki today. If the kids was this balanced, we'd see this type of sumo everyday. That we don't is just one of the indicators illustrating how this bout was arranged if not scripted. Aonishiki is one of the best at standing his ground at the tachi-ai, but it was evident here that he was leaving himself as vulnerable as possible.

This one looked good for the sheep as Yoshinofuji keeps himself in the race at 8-3 while Aonishiki gracefully takes one for team sumo in falling to 9-2. You have to ask yourself: who would the Association rather have on the leaderboard this basho...Aonishiki or Yoshinofuji? The last two days of gifted wins in favor of Yoshinofuji have answered that.

Before we move on...to Yoshinofuji's credit, he's looked great in executing sound sumo against mukiryoku opponents.  I wish I could say the same about Onosato.

The biggest cancer thus far on the basho has been faux-zeki Kotozakura. The dude was 2-5 at the end of the first week and even had his ass handed to him by Ura. Unfortunately, Baby Waka has been crying to daddy about buying him some wins, and that's what's happened for four straight days now. Against M4 Ohshoma today, Ohshoma stayed ducked low at the tachi-ai with both guys flatfooted, and as Kotozakura brought his arms out wide and high as if to set up a quick slapdown, Ohshoma beat him to it and simply put both palms to the dirt before standing straight back up. Uh, that wasn't planned or anything.

The whole thing didn't even last one second as Kotozakura is gifted another dirty win in moving to 6-5. As for Ohshoma, he falls to 3-8 and why not take the money? I'm sure the going rate is more for an Ozeki than the usual 200K yen that changes hands among the rank and file.

Okay, that previous bout didn't have any yusho implications, but Kotozakura's entire existence on the banzuke is complete fraud.

The next bout featured Yokozuna Hoshoryu taking on Sekiwake Ohho, and Hoshoryu got the right arm inside easily at the tachi-ai while reaching for the left outer grip. He couldn't latch on, however, as Ohho was looking to unleash a quick kote-nage with the left arm wrapped around Hoshoryu's right, but before he could really get it going, Hoshoryu used his forward momentum to force Ohho down and across yori-taoshi style with just the right arm.

There are very few people who can do that to Ohho against his own will, but Hoshoryu made it look easy today in moving to 9-2 while Ohho is on the brink at 4-7.

The day ended with Onosato taking on Komusubi Takanosho, and Takanosho caught Onosato with a wicked chokehold using the right hand that had Onosato staring up at the rafters (what's new?). Instead of charging forward as he could have, Takanosho began his slow retreat presumably to let Yoko Ono back into the bout, but the tachi-ai was so good that Onosato's right knee just buckled as Takanosho began that retreat, and Onosato just flopped to the dohyo floor in under two seconds. Oops.

You can tell that Takanosho was not trying for a slapdown or a pull because after Onosato hit the deck, Takanosho ran forward to the other side of the dohyo to maintain his balance and not fall on top of Yoko Ono. When someone is looking to too pull, they need to escape laterally or take a step back as part of the move.  In this bout, however, you have Takanosho near the edge on his side of the dohyo, and then after the "pull," he ends up clear over there on Onosato's side.  How does that happen if Takanosho is setting up a real pull?  The key to the bout was that Onosato got obliterated at the tachi-ai, and this time, he couldn't recover even though I think Takanosho was trying to let him do exactly that.

Regardless of that, the yusho board took an interesting and unexpected turn the last two days and now looks like this:

9-2: Onosato, Hoshoryu, Aonishiki
8-3: Yoshinofuji, Tokihayate, Nishikifuji

Hmm...I've chosen to report just two days so far this basho and Onosato has lost on each day I've commented??  I'm sorry I haven't been commenting every day.

Kyushu Basho Day 10 Comments
It was 31 years ago when I was living in Fukuoka full time and the sumos came to town, and one of the OL's in my office took me to the Takasago-beya for morning Keiko. Konishiki was the top rikishi in the stable even though he was in the twilight of his career, and Mitoizumi was the other Makuuchi rikishi. There was a Caucasian dude from Hawaii named Sunahama in the stable who was a Juryo rikishi, and there were a handful of other Hawaiian rikishi in the lower ranks that became good acquaintances of mine. Akebono and Daiki would also frequently come to the Takasago-beya for de-geiko accompanied by their stablemaster, Takamiyama, and so I really got an up-close look at some fantastic rikishi. From them--especially the non-sekitori Hawaiians, I learned about some of the things that go on behind that scenes in sumo that are never talked about.

The entire experience was so fascinating to me, and this was the only sport that would grant casual fans such personal access to the rikishi and their practice sessions, and so I found the addresses of all the stables in Fukuoka during the Kyushu Basho, and I would visit as many of them as I could during the four weeks when they were in town. This went on for a number of years, and through that process I watched thousands and thousands of bouts if not ten thousand or more.

During these 31 years, I don't think much has really changed with the sport. The biggest change has occurred within myself as I slowly began to allow myself to accept the reality of what sumo really is and the way it works. I must admit that I'm still fascinated by it all, and I still want to absorb as much information as I can, but I never count down the days to the start of the basho as I did decades ago.

Switching gears a bit, I've had a major shift in my life in between basho that has greatly limited my ability to comment daily or at least on the weekday bouts. The shift is largely positive, but the downside is that commenting on sumo bouts has been knocked further down the rung of my daily priorities, so if I don't have time for it, so be it.

Sometimes I feel as if I could just copy and paste my comments from the previous basho, and nobody would even notice. I mean, the daily bouts and the yusho races this year in general have followed an obvious pattern, so there isn't anything new to reveal. There is also such little variety going on in sumo right now that by the end of Day 7, this was the leaderboard:



No wonder I don't feel bad about ignoring the basho to this point. I find myself fast forwarding through the first two-thirds of the day because it's all so inane. If I'm doing that, I know the fans are doing that as well, and I can tell by the YouTube numbers. People are interested in Onosato's bout, Hoshoryu's bout, and Aonishiki bouts are gaining obvious steam, but other than that, there is very little fan interest.

I knew that Onosato lost today before even watching the bout because I looked at the number of streams, and it was 50% higher than it normally would have been. People are only paying attention when there's a sensational headline, and to me, that's a serious problem. You have to have exciting rikishi all throughout the banzuke, and you need quality sumo for people to want to pay attention for nearly 2 hours, but this basho has been a great example of how little sumo has to offer right now.

One of the storylines that NHK World has been pushing the last few days is "Will this be the first basho where Onosato goes 15-0 for the first time in his career?" The problem was you had that dismal leaderboard at the end of Day 7, and they just couldn't afford gifting Onosato a zensho-yusho with second place coming in at 11-4.

I thought the Onosato - Yoshinofuji bout today was fixed. I know that the Yokozuna can't win a tachi-ai, and he can't defend himself, and he can't employ good sumo technique to move his opponents back against their will, but neither can the artist formerly known as Kusano. There was no desperation in Onosato's retreat today and no counter move. His exit from the dohyo and short waltz up the hana-michi was calm and collected. And then you have Yoshinofuji. When has he ever shown sumo skills like that? If the dude was that good, we'd see him try that tactic every day.

And before I forget, let's just take care of some brief housekeeping from the Aki Basho. It was no surprise that Onosato was allowed to yusho, but the biggest takeaway on senshuraku was the fear in Onosato's eyes when he fought Hoshoryu in the musubi-no-ichiban bout, a bout he knew wasn't arranged. He took one lick from his fellow Yokozuna from the tachi-ai and backed out of the dohyo so fast like a scared girl, and that's an insult to you scared girls out there. I've never seen such a cowardly performance on that stage ever.

Hoshoryu would of course throw the playoff bout in about two seconds making it look like a nage-no-uchi-ai, but you don't go from running away like a leedle girl to throwing a fellow Yokozuna in two seconds a few minutes later. The playoff was obviously staged, and unsurprisingly, Onosato was awarded another yusho for doing absolutely nothing and displaying zero sumo skill in the ring start to finish.

Speaking of staged, I got an email from a reporter in London a few weeks ago as the Sumo's took an international trip to England, and the reporter was like, "I really enjoyed the performance but felt that a few of the bouts were...staged?" That's how he put it. He then went on to say that Ura's bouts look staged and that he had video of the bouts if I wanted to see them.

I replied that at least 70% of the bouts in London were staged (and I didn't even watch any footage), and I praised him for actually noticing. We went back and forth for a few weeks as I enlightened him on something that he noticed immediately his first time watching sumo. To that reporter from London, he was sure he had the potential to break a big scoop, but I told him that nobody was going to run with it except tabloids, and they've already been there and done that.

As I've been watching the daily bouts on NHK World, especially early on, multiple English announcers pointed out prior to Tobizaru bouts that he seemed to steal the show in London, and that just further cements the fact that the whole exhibition was more of a clown show than it was serious sumo. Tobizaru and Ura grabbing all the exhibition headlines? It's no wonder the dude reached out to me with serious questions regarding the legitimacy of the events.

Okay, turning our attention to the Kyushu Basho, before I watched any of the bouts, I scanned the banzuke, and these were my notes:

* Aonishiki rightly belongs in that top Sekiwake slot, and he's won 11 bouts every basho of his Makuuchi career. I haven't read any headlines yet, but I presume he is up for Ozeki promotion this basho. He's easily better than all of the Japanese rikishi, so he is an Ozeki-caliber rikishi. We'll see what happens with him in Kyushu. His being an Ozeki doesn't move the needle whatsoever in terms of increasing Japanese fan interest, so we'll see what his camp decides. Aminishiki, his stablemaster, is not a rebel and will blow with the general Association winds, so let's see what happens.

* I like Takanosho in the Komusubi slot as he's one of the best Japanese rikishi on the banzuke. His counterpart, Takayasu, is such a tired and useless story.

* Kirishima at M2 and Tamawashi at M4 is how you know the banzuke is not real.

* You can imagine my surprise when I came across a rikishi at M5 named Yoshinofuji. Then I realized that it was just Kusano who had transitioned shikona. They usually save the name change for a big event like promotion to Makuuchi or promotion to the sanyaku or Ozeki, and I think in this case, they just needed something to put this guy on the map again. His sumo sure hasn't been doing that.

* Shodai at M5 made me blow a snot bubble.

* For some reason, I've always loved the M6 rank, and I like both guys there this basho in Atamifuji and Onokatsu. I think Onokatsu is my favorite rikishi right now.

* Nothing really sticks out until we get to M16 Ohshoumi, our lone rookie this basho. I like that he's 24 years old, but let's watch him for a few days.

Looks like Kotooshu's had a tough time scraping together cash to buy Ohshoumi bouts as he finished Day 10 at 2-8.

I will try and comment on all Makuuchi bouts at least one day this week. It really feels like everyone is afraid to beat Onosato straight up but with nobody beneath him aside from Aonishiki doing anything, the leader board just gets sadder with each passing day.

I already posted the board at the end of Day 7 above. Because two of the four rikishi from that board (Yoshinofuji and Fujinokawa) lost, this is what they were forced to do at the end of Day 8:



The only reason you would dip down to the two-loss row even though the top guy didn't lose would be to inflate the yusho race.  Problem was...they nearly lost half of that leaderboard by the end of Day 8, so this is what we got heading into Day 10:

Tokihayate got his ass kicked by Chiyoshoma on Day 10, and so we were poised to whittle it down to just three rikishi by the end of the day, but Onosato lost on purpose to take the leaderboard down to three losses now.

The problem is that if just feels so tired.  Onosato and Aonishiki have been staples on every leaderboard since the Ukrainian entered the division. His sumo, however, is not flashy, and I think people are already bored with him. The novelty of his Ukrainian heritage has also worn off, and as I stated earlier, he's not moving the needle.

Hoshoryu is a known commodity for sure, but he's been asked to step aside for Onosato since the Japanese fraudster was crowned Yokozuna. Aside from those three, the names we're constantly seeing are Tokihayate (is there a more boring rikishi?), Fujinokawa, and Nishikifuji.

Yes, Yoshinofuji has been in the mix as well, and he'll be back on the Day 11 board, but he's another manufactured rikishi who brings no excitement.

Sumo's biggest problem right now is that they have no equivalent of Joćo Fonseca or Mirra Andreeva in professional tennis. Even a gal like Aoi Itoh from Japan got some run this year with her constant forehand slice shots and some big upsets of players like Jasmine Paolini.

Sumo has none of that going for it right now, and the first two thirds of the broadcast each day as been complete torture. No wonder sumo has dropped so low on my priority list.

I'm sure I'll be back to comment on some actual bouts, but we'll see what each day brings.