Following its regular banzuke meeting, the NSK announced the names of the rikishi who will be promoted to Juryo for Hatsu basho.
Two men advance this time: the veterans Gagamaru (Georgia, Kise beya) and Sokokurai (Inner Mongolia, Arashio beya). There is no first-time promotee.
While the NSK does not announce the names of the wrestlers who will be demoted as a result, it is easy to infer that Gokushindo and Chiyonoo, who had the deepest make-koshi at the lowest rank, will be the ones to part with their silk shimekomi. Chiyonoumi may have been saved by that win on senshuraku against Terutsuyoshi.
We wish Sokokurai and Gagamaru health and good luck on their return to sekitori status.
a well deserved and earned return to Juryo. congratulations to you both!
Congrats to them! I was going to wonder if Gagamaru would pass the symbolic 200 kg threshold with sai-juryo celebrations, but actually his record now indicates 212 kg. Probably more accurate than his legendary 199.
I thought Sokokurai would come back once he got healthy as his drop was down to injury. Gagamaru on the other hand, had been on a long, steady decline and I thought we’d seen the last of him as a sekitori. Both of them deserve a lot of credit.
I think Gagamaru got lucky this time because he dropped only to Ms1, where a 4-3 is enough (he did get 5, though, which is more than I expected). With his size and experience he could scrape by. Next time, though, he might drop lower and it won’t be so easy.
He also had wins to Gokushindo, Tamaki and Kagamio, who had abysmal tournaments. Btw, why did Tamaki have 8 bouts?
I don’t believe yet that Gagamaru can reestablish in Juryo, but maybe he magically rediscovers his sumo, like Aoiyama two leagues ahead of him.
Tamaki probably had an eighth bout because Makuuchi had an odd number of rikishi, meaning they borrowed a Juryo rikishi, so Juryo had to borrow a Makushita rikishi, and everybody there had all their seven bouts already.
The reason behind this is that when there are an odd number of sekitori, they need to take someone up from Makushita. When all rikishi have matches left to fight in the tournament, they always pair the top of Makushita up on the first day of the Round and have them available to use as a replacement the second day of the Round. Round 7 though, they have to plan for this ahead of time, and even then if a sekitori withdraws so the only schedule they are not on is Day 15, that means they lose exactly half of a sekitori match and so the parity of the available rikishi is wrong and someone in Makushita gets an extra match Day 15.
The weird thing about Tamaki is that he had his 8th bout on Day 14, meaning that if Kaisei hadn’t withdrawn, they would have needed to have someone else have a 8th match as well on Day 15. The reason for this is that they did not leave two rikishi in the top of makushita available to send into Juryo with how they planned the Day 13 schedule. In a thread on Sumo Forum, someone went through that if they needed to pull people into Juryo because of a withdrawal, it would most likely be Daiseido and Kotodaigo, and Kotodaigo was probably too low ranked to be used except in emergencies. The emergency did happen when Arawashi withdrew, and it was revealed that the torikumi schedulers hadn’t intended on using Kotodaigo, but simply didn’t leave anyone available. That’s really not a huge deal, but it’s highly unusual because normally they do leave the right number available to go fight into Juryo if the need presents itself. Did they just forget about it? All it would have required was pushing the top 3-3 and 4-2 match down a spot to have the highest ranked one fight in Juryo. If no one withdrew they’d presumably each have matches Day 15 against demotion candidates. That’s what happens most of the time,
Thanks for the long explanation. I already thought it had to do with someone missing in Juryo, I just hadn’t seen it before. Like you explained, I thought they would pull up someone with an open bout and kind of let this problem with an uneven number of rikishi drop that way all the way to the bottom.
Hopely Gagamaru overcome his mother’s death. Even he has no wife, no family member left now…