So I found out recently that the Royal Albert Hall would be hosting a 5-day Basho this year, and decided that I'd probably have to go if the tickets weren't ludicrously expensive.
I scouted hotels, considered prebooking but decided I dislike the red-tape of cancellations more than missing out on options, and bought the "friends of the RAH" membership so I'd get access to ticket presales.
Then my partner learned that a friend from Hong Kong was moving to London this summer, and our plans coalesced - now even without sumo tickets, we can justify the trip. The Basho is during her holidays anyway so it was always planned as a trip together, but now there was an option if tickets were prohibitively expensive - just buy one, and she goes and gets sushi with her friend that day. Sumo is very much my obsession right now, not hers.
So we decided that we would play it by ear, and this morning I got into the queue, got given a terrible spot at random (600th in line, eesh), and had a whole host of website bugs before getting access to the Sunday (final day) tickets, where all the best value seats were already taken. I moaned a bit, then grabbed what looked like the two next best seats for the optimal price we agreed on.
Bugs notwithstanding, it went well and I'm extremely stoked for October now! Moreso than for the Rocket League LAN I'm going to in 3 weeks - there's something about the way this whole thing came together, natural contingencies keeping my nerves at bay. I hate online ticket purchasing these days, and this would have been horrible had I not been comfortable losing out.
Anyway, if you're interested yourself, general sale goes up on Friday 7th March at 10am, and you can find the link to the main page here.
Well, it seems the stars aligned.
A lot had to go right for things to pan out this way.
A Rocky Start to the Basho
We started the January basho with 3 yokozuna contenders - if any of them won the event they'd be in very good stead to see promotion either this banzuke or next, but it quickly became clear it wouldn't be that simple. By Day 5, the three sumo had questionable records:
- Hoshoryu 4-1
- Onosato 2-3
- Kotozakura 1-4 (!!)
Hoshoryu's 4-1 looks reasonable, but his loss came to Atamifuji, for whom it was a first win in a very shaky 5-10 campaign so set the scene for a tricky tournament. Onosato and Kotozakura's records left them basically out of contention already, but still with the potential to right their ships and get a solid winning record to attempt promotion later in the year.
While the top of the field was floundering, Kinbozan had returned from a short dip into Juryo (where he secured a tournament win) and was flying with his easier schedule, with a 5-0 record alongside the stalwart Oho and veterans Chiyoshoma and Tamawashi.
By day 9, the situation was much worse.
Hoshoryu suffered genuinely surprising losses to Shodai (2-5) and Hiradoumi (4-4) to sit at 6-3, and it felt like things had gone fully into recovery mode - knuckle down, get a tidy 10+ wins, come back next time with a great streak of numbers to support promotion if you win in March.
Onosato had largely righted his ship, and was also sitting on 6-3 after a nice run of wins. He was in the same situation as Hoshoryu - rack up some more wins, don't give up any easy ones, and come back in March.
Kotozakura was out of the running for early 2025, sitting on 3-6 and needing a miracle to get a positive record, nevermind a yokozuna promotion. To be absolutely fair to him, he looked so off the pace this month that I'd be shocked if he wasn't actively ill or injured - compared to November he was a shadow of himself so I hope he can bounce back.
Kinbozan was 9-0 even after facing tougher opponents as the days progressed, and the ozeki were well out of touch needing a minor miracle to have a chance at the Emperor's Cup.
A Minor Miracle
To have even a chance at the tournament win, Hoshoryu needed to go undefeated for the rest of it while his rivals crumbled under the pressure to set up a day 15 showdown.
He went undefeated.
They crumbled.
The set up on Day 15 was perfect.
Kinbozan had suffered losses to komisubi Abi and the charging Hoshoryu, and faced the 11-3 Oho in a pivotal match. Win and the cup was his, lose and there'd be a tiebreaker between the two on equal 12-3 records. If Hoshoryu beat the wavering Kotozakura (something of a foregone conclusion on form alone), he'd also be on 12-3 creating a possible 3-way tiebreaker.
And that's how it went. Oho and Hoshoryu looked impressive, Kinbozan looked unsure. As soon as Kinbozan's foot went out in his bout against Oho, the mood changed drastically and you could feel the focus shift to the final bout, Hoshoryu and Kotozakura - and with the knowledge that a tiebreaker was certain to happen, how Hoshoryu's likely presence would affect it.
You already know the outcome from the title - Hoshoryu won through*, following up his 6-3 start with 8 straight wins to clinch the title against some of the stiffest opposition left for him. He beat Kinbozan and Oho twice each this basho, and showed some killer composure in the most important matches of his career.
Even with this, on paper alone this wasn't a guarantee of promotion. The last key factor was the topic of my [last post] - Terunofuji's retirement.
The Vacant Seat
The Japan Sumo Association insists that there are no quotas for a certain number of Yokozuna to be active at any time, but it's clear that there was no appetite to be on 0 for any length of time. Fans like for their to be a yardstick of where the top of the sport sits, and crucially it's ultimately decided by laypeople whether someone qualifies for the position (more info here).
Long and short - in my opinion, while these are fans of sumo they tend to have a vested interest in keeping it marketable and profitable, and a lack of yokozuna would hurt those interests. This is a bit unpleasant to say, but the upshot is that when someone like Hoshoryu is recommended to them with what looks like a 50:50 shot at promotion, the empty top rank was enough to make the decision unanimously in favour.
The Future
I'm very new to sumo - I haven't followed the ins and outs over the years, so I have very little context for what this all means beyond my own instinctual understanding of sport in general.
I think this looks promising?
With Hoshoryu at the top, his career looks potentially very bright - he's relatively young at 25, and while he has had some issues with injury he's been lucky enough to find time to recuperate without losing his rank. As Yokozuna, he's in no danger of falling down the order if he takes time out, so any injuries he does experience will have a much better chance of being dealt with properly. This appears to have been a focus of his development as a wrestler, and it looks like it has paid off.
For the rest of the scene, things still look promising. Hoshoryu is excellent and tenacious, but he's not yet of that unbeatable stature other Yokozuna of the 21st century had, including his uncle Asashoryu. This means there's still a chance for those like Kotozakura and Onosato to sit up there with him, or for Oho to find the consistency he needs to climb with him.
To my untrained eye we're not sitting at the start of "The Age of Hoshoryu" yet, and that's quite exciting to see alongside his promotion. There's a target on his back and I'm keen to see how he responds to that pressure, and how his peers respond to the opportunity.
I started watching Sumo in November. I'd seen it on TV when I was visiting Japan a few years ago and didn't think too much of it then, but as someone with a vague interest in spectating various forms of wrestling I was always vulnerable to mild obsession like this, should it become easy for me to access.
Anyway as it turns out, NHK (the Japanese national broadcaster) posts highlights of the top division matches on YouTube every day, removing them when the next two-monthly* tournament starts.
So I tuned into the November tournament, got entirely hooked on it as part of my morning routine for 2 weeks, and started clapping when a match was good. This is who I am now.
The January Basho started last weekend, and already a bunch of stories are developing that makes 2025 look like an interesting year, if possibly a transitionary year.
A little groundwork
Sumo has a bunch of rankings, from the top couple of guys all the way down to the capable amateur. For our purposes, we're only really able to talk Makuuchi, the top 42 wrestlers, who are split into two main groups - maegashira (the rank and file) and the sanyaku (the current elite, generally less than 10 guys).
| A handy ranks chart, grabbed from japandeluxtours.com
You win a bout by staying on your feet within the circle, and you lose by not staying on your feet or leaving the circle. There are intricacies beyond that, but nothing that you need to know to understand a typical bout.
The most important thing to understand is that a single tournament at makuuchi division involves all the guys doing 1 fight per day for 15 days, and the person with the best win-loss record wins the tournament. Some work is done to make sure nobody can win a tournement without facing the top ranked guys, but generally you wrestle those close to you in rank, and if you have a positive record (e.g. 9 wins 6 losses) you will probably rank up.
| The current rankings, from sumoreference - red outlines are new career high ranks
No Yokozuna
| The GOAT
The sanyaku are also split into different ranks but right now we only care about the top 2 - yokozuna and ozeki.
To work your way up the ranks in sanyaku you generally need to be more than just "not losing" - you need to be winning and looking good while you do it. Getting to ozeki typically requires a win-loss ratio of over 70% against the top of the makuuchi division for 3+ tournaments, and yokozuna requires a step above that with 80+% and also winning one of the last 3 tournaments.
Neither of these requirements are guarantees though, and the yokozuna promotion especially also requires them to get the OK from a committee who are also very concerned with how dignified a wrestler is - this can seem petty (and they absolutely have made some very dodgy calls on this in the past regarding foreign wrestlers), but yokozuna are the face of the sport so it's not entirely unreasonable.
The important part is that it's really fucking hard to get to yokozuna. There have been 42 promoted in the last hundred years, there's something of a drought going on right now. Hakuho (likely the greatest of all time) and Kakuryu both retired in 2021, leaving the newly-promoted and plagued-with-injury Terunofuji as the only yokozuna for the last 3 years.
| This is what a yokozuna's tournament record looks like
Of the 12 tournaments in 2023/24, he missed 6, retired from 3, and won the other 3 - because that's what yokozuna do, they win. He attempted to wrestle in this January Basho, but after a 2-3 record in his first 5 bouts he chose to accept the calls of his body and retire from wrestling leaving the sport without a top-ranked wrestler for the first time in over 30 years before Akebono was promoted.
This leads us to the next interesting detail.
A Japanese Yokozuna?
| The trio of Yokozuna Candidates
Akebono was Hawaiian, the first non-Japanese wrestler to be made yokozuna, and since his promotion things have been pretty bad for Japanese prospects - only 3 of the last 10 promotions have been Japanese wrestlers, and the only one of the 21st Century - Kisenosato - had a short career plagued with injuries.
Mongolia, with its rich tradition of similar wrestling, has dominated the rank since, with 5 of the last 6 promotions including the GOAT Hakuho. It's hard to feel like a country like Japan wouldn't be eager to find and promote any Japanese wrestler who seems capable of not embarrassing themselves in the role. Thankfully, that doesn't look like a problem in 2025.
There are currently 3 ozeki eyeing the possibility of promotion to the top rank -
- Kotozakura - Winner of the November 24 Basho, a 3rd generation sanyaku (grandson of the 53rd yokozuna of the same name), and the top contender as of the start of this basho. While his results in September weren't spectacular he went 14-1 in November and with a similar showing in January he had a chance to get the kind of win-loss record required to go with his tournament win. His promotion would be a great win for "traditional" sumo.
- Hoshoryu - A young Mongolian wrestler with already several years experience in makuuchi but only 1 tournement win from back in July 23. He and Kotozakura had a 13-1 final day match to decide the November tournament, and he will need a tournament win to have a chance at yokozuna promotion after the March tournament.
- Ōnosato - Another young wrestler who went through the fairly common modern route to pro sumo via college sumo. The press loves this kid, and with good reason - debuting in January he won the May and September basho and was promoted to ozeki for the November tournament, where he stumbled slightly but maintained a solid 9-6 record. With a 14-1 record in January it'd be very plausible for him to see an incredibly rapid yokozuna promotion.
As I'm writing this halfway through the January event, I have some knowledge of the standings, but without spoiling things too much - we aren't seeing a promotion from this basho. As things drag on and Onosato's wins move out of the 3-month range, Kotozakura's will also and that leaves only Hoshoryu with a decent shot soon, provided he can clinch one event. It's very up in the air, and I wouldn't be shocked to see a couple of promotions this year if any of these guys can string some results together at the right moment.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the wrestlers outside the sanyaku to say anything about the prospects lower down the track, but it's not looking like we have any dominant forces in the top division at the moment.
Wrap-up
I appreciate this is something of a special-interest dump with limited appeal, but if you're like me and susceptible to storylines then sumo is a very dangerous hobby. The sport has a ton of justified controversy and claims of corruption and abuse in its recent history, but the simplicity and tradition of it all is really hard to resist as a spectator. Beyond a few presentational changes, a basho looks almost identical to how it did 100 years ago, and the techniques used remain the same too. There's a magic to that.
Some recommended viewing
NHK WORLD-JAPAN - GRAND SUMO: Day 1 of the January 2025 Tournament - The start of the current basho (may be unavailable after February).
Sumostew - A Concise Guide to Terunofuji - a great video from right before Terunofuji's promotion to yokozuna, charting his incredible recovery from knee surgery and the depths of sumo.
LuckyPyjamasTV - The Pride of Yokozuna: Hakuho's Lone Battle - A reupload of a documentary by NHK, released shortly after Hakuho's final tournament win and subsequent retirement. The video that caused YouTube's algorithm to recommend me NHK highlights.
* There's just no way I can bring myself to use a word as ambiguous as "bimonthly", and I have nothing better to offer than two-monthly and twice-monthly