Too Much Lore: Sumo 2, Fatter and Sassier
We’re back with part two of our deep dive into Sumo history! This episode covers the transformation of the sport from the Meiji era to today. We discuss the formalization of the Yokozuna rank, the impact of international wrestlers on Japanese tradition, and the fascinating, messy politics of the JSA. Don’t miss this look at the world’s most intense, high-speed game of chess.
Transcript!
You're listening to No Plot Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every
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Welcome back. I'm back to Oh [ __ ]
What? Well, you know, I figured uh since this is part two, I should just jump right
into it. Uh because Okay. Yeah. This is this is again another Josh Heffy episode. We
we cut things off in the middle of our sumo history. uh just as I was sort of
giving a brief talk about the history of Yokozuna as a uh a rank uh and moving
into the modern era of sumo. So we've touched on the basics of what is sumo,
the early preodern history, the the ancient history of sumo, the weird
Japanese middle ages, and now kicking people. Yeah, exactly. Kicking people to death. Uh well, gods fight about a tent or
something. Anyways, um can I just say that like Shinto
stories are on the whole more wacky than I'm used to a lot of
religious stories being, you know, I think that's a pattern I've seen in like Eastern religions in
general is that their gods are much more human than other gods. If you talk about like uh Chinese culture, uh Hindu
culture, uh Shinto, like their gods are
not that far above us. They just have a different job. Um well, the Japanese
have such a an interesting aesthetic with and like relationship with the
supernatural. Like what one of my favorite things about the Japanese isles
is just the the wide diversity of monsters that they have where it's just like
[ __ ] that makes no sense anywhere else that like it it doesn't follow any of
the the standard like chimeic things of like I took a hawk and a lion and I
smashed them together to make a cooler critter. No, it's just like here is a frog person with a head shaped like a
bowl full of water and if you want to deactivate them, bow politely. Yeah.
Yeah. And and not just because you're being polite because bowing will force them to
bow to you which spills the water out of their head and makes them dead. Like what? No, I the Japanese kami are so
bizarre and they're a good portion of the reason why I love the board game Rising Sun because the kami are a huge
part of it and there's so many wacky ones. Um yeah, I I love it. Uh but
speaking of Shinto, Sumo, uh so yeah, so we ended uh right before the start of
the Maji era. Sumo has just been reestablished as it was banned for a
little bit. Now it's back. Uh the families have been fighting. Why did it come back? Uh I think because the Shinto priests
acts really nicely. Um they basically said, "Hey, we need to run a charity event. We need to make
some money, right? Can we please entertain some people with this if we like put some boundaries in place?"
Honestly, like if you came to me and were like, "Hey, we're planning to do a
charity thing. Would you like to watch some people slap the [ __ ] out of each other and then knock each other out of a
ring?" I'd be like, "Yes, yes, please." 100%. Yeah.
Most importantly, can I gamble on it? Because I think that's also played a big big role in it is okay,
gambling. Gambling makes a lot of money. And if you're a broke church that needs to spruce the place up,
just, you know, open up the slot machines or whatever for a week, like, unless you're Las Vegas right now.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, they don't have enough Canadian tourists to keep Las Vegas
open. Oops. Oops. Um Oops. So, um, like I said, they put some rules
into place with the reestablishment of Sumo. Um there was some back and forth with a couple of uh catty little
families over who gets to decide who's an actual champion. Um but
as we enter the late 19th century, uh the
sumo starts to um go through another big cultural shift. So it had been
semi-legitimized. Um the uh Yokazuna
rank uh was something that was still highly politicized, but everything else
was pretty formal. Um the way that you worked your way up the rankings, what an official ranking meant, the rules of the
sport. Um but by the time we hit uh 18 about 6870
sumo is viewed as sort of backwards and embarrassing. Japan has contacted the
modern world. Uh the era of Japanese isolation has ended. Um,
Matthew Perry, uh, not the friends actor, but the American admiral has, uh,
reached the islands and started exposing Japan to the modern world. I didn't realize until after he died
that I wanted Matthew Perry to play Matthew Perry,
but now for him. Um, right. So
they popular society starts to kind of turn away from it towards more
Americanized things both in their dress and their military styles. Um so a lot
of the the samurai culture starts to disappear at that time and with it sumo. Well I'm not sure that samurai culture
or sumo ever fully recovered from that. Right. Like uh I remember even as late
as like the 1990s, early 2000s, like the idea of sumo was kind of laughable.
Yep. Like it didn't have a lot of respect in Western culture. It was It was something that you joked about.
Yeah. It wasn't really something that like people took seriously in Canada at least. Yeah. And and
part of it was, I think, the isolated nature of Japan that kept the
true sport from getting out there. like you saw representations in art and
you heard some you know comic examples of it but it was pretty insulated from
um western influences for a very long time. Um even now it's difficult for
western audiences to get into the sport because it's so culturally tied to
Japan. They're very protective of it. Um, so major restoration starts
long story lines too, right? Like you've got things that have been going on for like some families for like dozens or
like hundreds of years that need to be taken into account for like various
events that are still happening today. So Sure. Yeah. Um, so
a lot of jumping on points. So it takes a dip for a while, but then in 1884, Emperor Magi himself organizes a
tournament and uses it as a sort of a a focal point for national symbolism and
this strong nationalist identity that sprung up in the time of their successes against Korea and China. Um, so
I'm sure that's going to go great for this. Uh so yeah if you if you didn't know uh
Japan actually ruled Korea for about 40 45 years. Um
in that time in uh 1925 the Japan Sumo Association is sort of reassembled uh as
a formal governing body uh and they start by expanding tournaments from two a year to four and then from four to six
in 1958 where it's stayed the same. people talk about basically
in in their mind sort of the modern era starts with uh the six tournament era.
Um and then uh slightly before that in 1949 they went from having 10day tournaments to
15. Uh and well like 1958 feels like a modern number. Yeah. Yeah.
Like it's post Korean War. It's it's Yeah. Yeah.
Everything starts with Vietnam, you know. So, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what our
childhood innocence was stripped away. Now we're now we're modern.
I know. Um so yeah, even even though Yokazuna was
written on the Bons uh as early as 1890 um for the first time due to the 16th
Yokazuna insisting that it be put on the Bons. It used to just be Ozaki.
Everyone's Ozaki. He was at a champion level. He's like, "No, I'm a Yokazuna." Like, "This means something." It used to
not mean anything. Now it does. Um and then uh in like slightly after that, like
1909, it becomes like officially recognized with the the 19th and 20th
Kazuna saying like, "Yes, this is the highest rank you can achieve." Um and
you got to respect that hustle. Yeah. It's just like yeah, this is my title. It's also the thing you aspire to.
Yes. Yeah. It it went from like, hey, this is just like kind of a political title with like ceremonial functions to
like, no, no, no, this this is I'm the real deal. Um, and then they formed the Yokazuna Deliberation Council in 1950 to
basically like put rules, well, loose rules in place, but rules nonetheless
for becoming promoted to there. There's been exceptions, but you generally know
you have to get to a certain rank and then win two tournaments back to back and then you'll be promoted. Um, so um
they've been in charge of it since then. Uh, and then the first one they promoted officially was the 41st Yokazuna. Um, so
sorry. So we went from like 18 to 41. So, so the officially on the Bonsuk was
at 16 and then 60 years later you went to 41.
Now, okay, there was a lot less Yokozuna in the early days, like a lot less because
again, it was like a political title. There was only two tournaments a year. You kind of had to like buy your
Yokazuna license. Once they formalized the process for becoming a Yokazuna, they added a lot more in those early
days, but um there was this burst of Yokazuna that happened in the early
1900s uh just because now it was an official rank so you could aspire to it and figure out how to get there. Um and
then they kind of put the council in place to like reign that back a little bit. So since the council's been formed,
there's only been another like 35 added. Um so
Okay. Yeah. Um, so
there's been there's been not a ton of change since the 1960s. Um, they've done a couple
things like uh the roof that was over the the dohillo. They removed the
pillars that were holding it up. It used to be like physically attached to the dojo, which eventually they were like,
"You know what? We can just hang that roof from the ceiling cuz we're indoors anyways." And then we don't have to have
these pillars blocking the view of everyone. They still have four colored tassels hanging from the roof that sort
of symbolize the pillars. But yeah, they're just like, "Okay, we get north, southeast, west, whatever." Um,
and now symbology is still there. Godamn. Yeah, it it feels like a a sort of a um
a concession for like the spiritual origins of the sport while understanding
like the need for accessibility to like mainstream audiences. Um cuz they did
start televising these uh matches as early as the ' 50s and60s. So having a
big pole in the way of your camera doesn't really help anything. Um they've also
you would assume that they'd position the cameras in such a way that that wouldn't be a problem, but also like
the guys move, you know, so yeah, limits the amount of space you can use for the cameras. I guess
it also did help the ringside judges. So there in addition to the the referee in the middle, there's five guys on the
outside who are senior ranking members of the JSA, so coaches and former former
Yokazunas and stuff who observe the match and if the judge they think makes
the call wrong or there's ambiguity about the outcome of a match, they can put their hand up, stand up and they
will get together and talk about what happened and they have the ultimate deciding authority. So
Okay. So, when do we get that in hockey? Oh, right.
I mean, like the They added video recall to a two more
special judges, but it came after hockey already had video recall. So, I feel like if we could just get
five more judges in hockey, then we'll have the best of both worlds.
But, um, so these guys, they can overturn a call if they think it was
wrong. Okay. They can also just say, "Hey, it was too close to call. Do it again."
It's called a torn tornado. What's the the consequence of the call
being made incorrectly? Does the match just go to the other wrestler or like what happens there?
So, they can just say, "Hey, uh, you got it wrong. This guy actually won." And
that's it. That guy wins. End of story. Um,
funny thing to note that the referees actually carry tento knives in theory
for uh committing suicide if they got something so egregiously wrong that they
felt the need to re reclaim their honor by killing themselves. Has this ever been televised?
No. Uh, I I haven't looked. I can't think of any examples of a judge
actually killing themselves over a result any time in like after ancient sumo after after they
stopped killing each other in the ring. I don't think the judges cared about killing themselves if they got the call wrong. Um
I would not be so sure about that. Fair cuz like Tokugawa era like that that was
taken very seriously. Like if you if you [ __ ] up that bad Yeah. at the thing that you were like divinely
decided to do or whatever. Yeah. You would be expected to take your own life. Yeah. And if they were taking sumo that
seriously, then yeah, I would not be surprised at all. Yeah. I mean, they didn't for no reason. So, who knows? I just
don't know when the last time that happened was. Um certainly not in my lifetime.
Uh three weeks ago. There. No. Okay. There was there was a
scandal with one of the head judges who wound up quitting like a year ago and he didn't kill himself. So, uh whatever
happened to good traditional Japanese values.
Uh anyways, they've they've done some rules tweaking over the years like the the initial charge attachi has become a
lot more um regulated. Um, it used to just be like about started with mutual
consent. Basically, as soon as both guys were like, "I'm ready." They just went and
if you look back at old fights from like the ' 50s, 60s, it was like they just kind of like stood behind the line, kind
of like set up and just went and it was very fast. Now, the rule is both guys
have to have both knuckles down on the clay before they can start.
Um, You know, they also start very fast though. Yes. Yes. Like after they've done all
their pre-fight rituals, which takes forever if you go in person, um once
once the judge says or once the ref says, "Okay, you can go for real." Now,
like what you'll see is like if we think of like the the four hands as like four
points of contact, they'll sit there with like three points of contact while one guy like wiggles his fingers for a
minute and then he'll just kind of like swing his hand and you go like and it's it's very quick. The idea being you're
set and like like a coiled spring. You're just like, "Ah." Um, but the other side of that, and this is
this is the thing that I find both hilarious and frustrating about Zumo, is that you will have three points of
contact on the the ground and the other guy will make like he's about to do it and then just get up and casually walk
away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He'll they'll kind of do the false start and he's like, "All right, hold on."
like something doesn't feel right cuz in the the idea is that they they like
synchronize their breathing and I'm like what are you talking about like no one is actually doing that but it's it's
it's so vague and it's part of what I actually like about the sport is that there's these weird emotional vagarities
to it. Like if you look at amateur sumo, which I don't know if it's necessary, but they
they have it much more structured where like you both put your fist down and then the ref says go and then you can
go, right? It's like it's it's too strict and clean for me. I
need some of that messiness, some of that some of that wonkiness. Um
you know, there's some guys who they don't even fully touch the ground with that other hand. they just kind of like flick their fingers at it. But it's like
we get the idea. Like you're ready to go. Let's go, you know, and I like that it's up to the athletes to decide when
they're going to go, not a ref, you know? Like this isn't this isn't a sprint. You're not sitting there waiting for the starting gun. It's
just like once the two of us have locked eyes and sort of like gotten in that like all right, we're going to go kind
of, you know, headsp space, like let us do our thing, right?
There's also like a I I feel like there's a strategic portion of it where like you have
somebody who is there and like you said they're a coiled spring, right? Like they are tense, they are ready, they're
anticipating and then you get up and you walk away and now they have to like loosen that up.
Yeah. And like get back into it. And so like and you see that those mind games
you see you see the mind games of like this guy's ready to go. I'm not. Something's off. Sorry. let's let's
reset. Or one guy's dallying around and eventually the judge is just like, "No,
reset. You guys got to, you know, figure this out." And then if you you can actually get like penalized for not
starting correctly, you know. Um if the judge doesn't think you guys went correctly, he'll just stop and say, "No,
redo that." Um so I kind of dig that the entire like starting gun for this sport is vibes.
Yeah. Yeah. Are the vibes, right? things in the sport, which is part of what I love
about it. I love a a messy, ambiguous sport. Like, if I wanted to see a sport that had all of its rules clearly
defined, I would just watch chess, you know? So, yeah, this is this is baseball going back to last week's
discussion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is high-speed chess, you know, but um that
that's roughly the the timeline of sumo. I want to say leading up to
I I I hesitate to call it like the current like the modern modern era. I think modern kind of covers everything,
but there's been some noticeable things that have happened to Sumo since uh
since the 80s essentially. um as okay the sport waxes and waines in popularity
in Japan. I mean currently it's still fairly popular but it is also seen as very traditional. It's something that
like your dad watches or your grandpa watches not necessarily the younger generation. Um
interestingly though like again doing some reading for prepping for these episodes one of the things that I was
seeing is it is experiencing a bit of a boom internationally. Yes. I was going to say that's that's
been one of the saving graces of professional sumo has been the introduction of international athletes
um and international audiences in a lot of ways. Um, so
despite NHK's best efforts to make sure that foreigners are not watching Zuma, they don't like it because this is their
national pastime, but um, so, okay, so let's start in the 80s. Um,
okay, foreign wrestlers aren't exactly new in sumo. There's
records of them as early as the 1920s, 1930s. Um, in fact, a guy from California was brought back as like a
Japanese sympathizer um from like the mid-30s uh who had gone over to do professional sumo, but you saw it pick
up a lot more uh in the modern era uh as they started moving into the 60s. Um, the first foreign wrestler to hit the
top division came in the 1970s, a guy named Takamayyama, who was a Hawaiian,
uh, which was a horrific portent to the future for Japanese sumo association. In
the late 80s, a bunch of Hawaiians showed up. Uh, Japan, just to touch on
this lightly, Japan has an interesting cultural relationship with Pacific Islanders. um they've always viewed them
as like genetic cousins. Um and yeah, got along very well, especially in the
Hawaiian Islands. Um and sumo has had history in weird places that Japanese
people have gone. So sumo showed up uh in a lot of clubs in Hawaii and a lot of
clubs in Brazil for some reason. Um and yeah. Yeah, there's like is that is Brazil where all of the like
Axis people went to the same way that all of the Nazis went to Argentina? I don't know the history of it, but
given that Brazil is also also took jiu-jitsu and then made it
their own, it seems like for some reason Japan and Brazil have this weird
cultural mingling. I think I think it's mostly tied to the Portuguese explorers
who were some of the first to make contact with Japan and then went to Brazil. Don't quote me on that. I'm not a
historian. This is my I was actually just thinking like how great Mauy Sumer wrestlers could be.
They're really good. Big dudes. So, uh, the first J the first
foreignb born Ozaki was a Hawaiian man named Konishik. He is huge or was huge.
He's still a big guy. He's not like 600 lb. If you look up
uh a picture a a a like a stereotypical picture of sumo wrestling, it's actually
a photo of Kishki fighting in the Royal Albert Hall in London wrestling against a guy who you swear is a quarter of his
size. He is terrifying looking. The lighting is perfect to just see this
mound of terrifying flesh. And that's also the time where the idea of the fat
sumo wrestler really starts pushing. These guys were big before, but they were big and muscular. Not just fat.
Sometimes they have they're still muscular to be fair, right? like they they they still have an incredible amount of strength, but
the for the most part you see classical depictions of sumo wrestlers as guys who are like jacked to the gills with like a
beer belly, which is closer to what you think of as like a powerlifter's body, right?
Mhm. Um Kishki was 600 lb and that was both
his biggest strength and what kept him from eventually be from ever becoming uh
Yokazuna. Um, he fought against a guy at the time, a Japanese Yokazuna named uh
uh the wolf uh uh uh I'm spacing out his name. I had it in my
head literally a second ago. Um I'll come back to it. Uh but that guy was I
mean like a a a more muscular Bruce Lee. He was strong. Uh Chon Fuji, that's
that's his name. Uh, Chon Fuji was a technical wrestler who still went for
he he wasn't trying to like he wasn't doing the um uh Oshumo, the pushing,
thrusting, just kind of push you out of the ring. He was a Yotuzumo guy who would get you on the belt and use throws
and judo techniques and grappling to trip you up. Um, yeah, he had a lot of struggles early in his
career because his strength was enough to win fights, but the wear
and tear on his body from trying to leverage people who were so much bigger than him caused him to like dislocate his shoulder. Um, so he had to put on
more size. Um, and he did and he was he's he was a national hero. He was one of their their greatest Yokozuna of all
time. He is the image of what a powerful Japanese Yokazuna should be. Um even the
legendary Taiho who was uh earlier in the century um was not a hugely fat guy.
He was just a big guy. Um Taiho until uh until Hakuho was the winningest Yokazuna
ever. Um, so the the idea of just like mass and bulk being your weapon started
coming around more with the Samoans and the Hawaiians because they were just huge dudes. Akib Bono was like 6'8, you
know. Um, that's huge. Yeah, massive guy. Um, so Akibono uh who uh
was is from Hawaii, real name Chadwick, which I will never get over. Um,
Akimoto becomes the first foreignb born Yokozuna uh, and a incredibly dominant
one. He fought uh, Chon Fuji and um, the
famous Takenana and Wakanohana over the course of the 90s uh, and paved the way
for the next Hawaiian Yokazuna, Muzashimaru. Uh, and those guys just
sort of redefined what sumo was going to be for quite a while. Um, Akabono, like
I mentioned, uh, eventually retired and came back and did some WWE wrestling,
things like that. Um, he's since passed away, unfortunately. Mashimaru and Kunishki both still live in Japan, run a
stable and coach. Um, just so that I'm absolutely clear because I don't actually know, was Akib
Bono the person who called themselves Yakuza uh, Yokazuna? No.
Yokazuna? No. Unrelated? No. Okay. Yokazuna was a guy playing a character
in the 90s. Akabono was an actual wrestler. They brought him in as like, hey, this is like the real Yokozuna. And
then there's been that's funny. Since then there's been another guy named Rkkeshi, which is just a
misprononunciation of Rickshi, uh, which is like what you would call a sum wrestler. Um, so that was a a
Is that guy also actually a sumo wrestler or is just a Hawaiian? He's just a big Hawaiian. Um, and they also like the WWE
has this really bad habit of like playing into like the grossest stereotypes and some of that stuff like, "Oh, this guy's ass is fully out, so his
finisher is just going to be like put his ass in your face." Stuff like that. Um, so
this guy's vaguely Arab themed bomb thing. Yeah, exactly. That's uh
literally my last memory of like 2000's era um like WWF is when they started
doing like they started leaning real hard into the war on terror and I was like I'm good.
So the Hawaiians do too good. Uh they do so good that the
JSA for a little while says no more foreigners please. Um, and they
unofficially ban the the HA from recruiting foreigners. Um, that's so
goddamn Japanese. It is extremely Japanese. What one of the things that I love and
find frustrating about Japan is their relationship with foreigners kind of in general.
Yeah. And the the idea of just saying that like foreigners can't participate in
sport. Yeah. in North America would be like people clutching their pearls. They would be so affronted by this decision
where in Japan it's just like of course foreigners aren't allowed to participate. The [ __ ] are you talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Why would we let foreigners participate? It's like if Canadians ban foreigners from playing hockey. Like that's that's
literally what it is over there. I don't hate that.
Yeah. Fair. Yeah. Yeah, if if we were just like, "No, actually, the NHL will never expand outside of Canada. Go
away." Uh, yeah. All all of the NHL teams south of the border can get [ __ ]
Um, so they put in this like soft ban, right? Uh, they say, "Oh, it's not
they're not actually banned, but they're also like, don't you dare recruit any foreigners." Um, and then late 90s,
early 2000s, they say, "Okay, we can have some foreigners, but we can only have 44 in the whole organization, and
everybody only gets two. Uh, okay. And then like a year later, they were
like, "Okay, okay, everybody only gets one, but there can be as many in the organization as as ex as we want,
right?" So, everybody can get one. Just one. Um, how many stables are there? I have no idea. There's a lot.
Okay. And that's the thing is like I I don't actually know how many stables there are because the ones I interact with are
just the ones that are like successful. Um, there's a lot of small stables out there with like a half a dozen guys and none of them make a salary, but they get
their money from the JSA. So, like the bills pay themselves and then they have the finances of Sumo are insanely
complicated because it's a combination of like revenue that the JSA generates plus what the individual stable can drum
up from supporters and sponsors plus what the wrestler themselves can negotiate for sponsorships. Like, it's
it's insane. Um but they're like, "Okay, we're gonna have a bunch of foreigners,
but only one for everybody." And right about that same time, um the Mongolians
show up now. Oh no. This is a big oh no because this is an
ongoing problem. Um so you mean racism against Mongolians in
Japan? Well, there's that. I mean like no what I'm what I'm talking about is the Mongolian domination of the sport.
Oh um so for those of you who don't know Mongolia has a national sport called
buck which is very similar to old school sumo. It is two guys in not a lot of
clothing trying to throw each other onto the ground each other to death. Buck is still practiced there uh in a
the same way it always has been. It's outdoors a lot of the time and the only way to win is throwing a guy to the
ground. Um, and it turns out that that skill set translates really really well
to a sport that's about wearing not a lot of clothes and throwing a guy to the ground. Uh, right. So, um, statistics wise,
more rules. Yeah, slightly. Uh, they just actually they just gave them
more ways to win. You're like, "Oh, I don't have to hit this guy with the earth. I can just shove him really hard. Cool.
Uh so in a sport where you're only allowed to
have one foreigner at your stable, most of those foreigners are Mongolians. Uh Mongolians make up roughly 7% of the
active sumo wrestlers and 33%
of the active salaried wrestlers. Uh I'm going to do some clicky clackies
because I want to know what the percentage of Mongolians living in Japan is. Uh I think all of them are in sumo.
I don't know. I don't know what's actually going on there, but these guys are being recruited directly from Mongolia.
Um right. So So as of mid2025, approximately 21,186
Mongolian citizens reside in Japan. Yeah. So that's for a country that has like 10 million
people in a city. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a lot of people. There's not a lot of Mongolians. And it turns out most of them are in sumo. Um,
so the Mongolians show up and
Asashoryu becomes the 68th Yokazuna. Asashouyu is a force of nature. He is
violent in a way that they haven't seen before in his sumo. He's also arrogant.
He has a lot of problems with the idea of a Yokazuna's
presentation and demeanor and the way he's supposed to act in public. Uh but
he is the start of a title wave. uh since since they have had uh assure you as the
68th Yokazuna, the 69th Yokazuna, the Mongolian Hakuho,
uh who I'll expand more upon in a second, but he is the goat.
Okay, the absolute goat. Uh right, the 70th Yokozuna, Harum Mafuji, another
Mongolian. The 71st, Kakaru, another Mongolian. And then Cassenosado, the
72nd Yokazuna, a Japanese man. How did he get there? Oh, kind of by accident.
He was really good, got promoted, and then never won a tournament again and had to retire in disgrace. Uh, why? Cuz
it took him so much work to beat Hakuho to get there that he blew his pec off and never was able to get surgery and
fix it. Um, damn. The 73rd Yokazuna, Teran Fuji, another
Mongolian. the 74th Yokoazuna, Hosuryu, the nephew of Asashoreyu, another
Mongolian. And now they do have a 75th Yokazuna, who thank God is Japanese, but
it's been a problem. Um, the Mongolians are really, really good. Uh, Hako's
father was essentially a Yokoazuna in Mongolia in Bach. Um,
these guys just perform outlandishly well. When I say outlandishly well, and when I say
Hakuho is the goat, Hakuho was they actually come from the Outlands and
they're doing very well. Um, Hakuho
was in the sport for about 20 years. He
won more tournaments than the next guy by almost doubling him. Uh he won 45
tournaments in his career. He won more tournaments than anyone else by a large
margin. He won every tournament in a in a 12-month span twice. I think he also
has more undefeated tournaments than everyone else. And his final tournament
was him beating the soon-to-be Yokazuna with a 150 record.
God damn. This guy is dominant like they've never seen before. And also a huge ambassador
for the sport. He established events like the Hakuho Cup. He reaches out to other foreigners and other foreign
countries and promotes the sport as much as he can. there. I could do obviously Japan loves him and they've
been helping him and pushing him in front of people as like an ambassador and they love everything he's doing.
As of last year, Hakuho is no longer in the JSA. Uh, okay. It would take at least a full episode to
go over not just the history of Hakuho as a wrestler, but what the hell has happened with him and the Sumo
Association since then. Um, well, in that case, I have some good news
because we have an entire new series coming out. Yep.
That is specifically about Sumo. Um, yeah, it's true. I'm not going to
start with Hakuho, but I am going to do an episode about what is happening with generally like racism in Sumo. Um,
yeah, Hakuho is their goat, and they hate him for it. uh they don't want people
knowing he was that good. I joke about it, but I also recognize that like
racism in Japan is a complicated thing.
And has a lot of facets that touch on traditionalism and Japanese exceptionalism. Yeah.
Japanese exceptionalism. And there's like the this whole mess. Yeah.
That's involved in like the the culture. So yeah, it does not surprise me even a little bit to know that they are kind of
freaking out about Mongolian dominance in this Japanese sport. Yeah. Um and we've talked about it a little
bit with like the like Hakaho running off to Mongolia and starting his own
league and yeah, all of that. Um but again, stuff we can get into in your own
podcast which I will not be there for. Um, talking all about sumo from a
Canadian perspective. Yes, Maple Sumo starts up in what, a week, two weeks?
Uh, less as of this publication. I think it will be yesterday.
Oh, I've done no homework. Uh, no. Uh, it's Yeah, it's going to be there. I
haven't even touched on the match fixing scandal of the early 2000s. Uh, turns
out organized crime, uh, a known problem in Japan and was super involved in throwing matches for years to the point
where they cancelled a tournament, uh, and fired like 15 people after the guys
behind Freconomics essentially exposed the fact that like, oh, math says some
of these guys are throwing matches. Okay, so like I expected a lot of possible things to come out of your
mouth. Like I was I I was thinking like Yakuza and like talking about all of the the organized crime [ __ ] freaking
nomics. Yep. Yep. Guys use econometrics to be like he shouldn't have won that match.
And it turns out they were right. All right. So if you want to know what
happened with all of that and you're interested in following what's new and
what's old and what is happening today in sumo, absolutely check out Maple
Sumo. Hey, thanks for making it all the way
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