If you want to watch the GOAT, plan to do it soon. In a revealing interview, Hakuho announced his intention to retire this year.
取材中に「今年引退」発言… #白鵬 語る“日本人横綱 "
— inhashi (@inhashi_) January 6, 2020
横綱, 家族との時間を楽しんでください☺️
01.06 [とくダネ] pic.twitter.com/ZfPKJLHmdE
He didn’t get more specific about when he would retire but there had been a lot of speculation that his ultimate goal was to be active for this year’s Olympics, where he will be a torch-bearer. Herouth found the tweet below, I stepped back to the original video before the workout video. Herouth’s thread below.
Hakuho gives us a rare peek into his weight training routine. He mentions he dyes his supporters to make them soon-to-be, per regulation. Dyes with… black tea.
— ヘルット (@SumoFollower) January 6, 2020
Then he blurts out: "I might as well let you see everything. It's going to end this year. I'll retire this year."
‼️ https://t.co/6fZJ5tMCBS
The first video from the original tweet gave some more inside into his motivations, namely to spend more time with his family and to raise a new crop of wrestlers. This past New Year, for example, he spent in Australia with his family…on his new passport as a Japanese national. So for those Tachiai readers in Oz (esp. Sydney) you may have seen him around town.
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Had to happen sometime, but I’ll miss watching him.
I’d add a question mark to the title of this post, since the sources I’ve seen can’t tell if he was serious.
He seemed pretty damn serious to me. I don’t think he was messing with the reporter.
Not sure anybody is able to see much in Australia right now – too much smoke from the terrible fires! :-(
Still, it’s the end of an era with his retirement.
Those fires keep going…I hope they stop soon.
“Dyes is supporters” what?
He dyes his supporters. I figure his favorite brand is white in color so he puts them in tea to make them darker.
Yeah, I (or rather my spelling checker) kind of botched that part. There was a directive from the NSK that all bandaging or supporters have to be skin-tone. He says there that the supporters are originally white, and he dyes them using black tea to have “a color closer to skin tone”. I found that funny.
He then reacts to some claims that were raised in social media, that he wears supporters not for health reasons but to put something hard inside them and knock out his opponents. He said that ideally, he wants to go on the dohyo without anything covering his skin. It’s a matter of pride. And the only reason he goes up with supporters is because he has to to survive.
(Which doesn’t actually refute the claim. But then comes the real banger of an announcement and the whole supporter thing becomes trivia)
I guess if you’re generally not getting thrown down to the clay constantly your athletic supporters never develop a brown color on their own.
I’d love to find out where Hakuho spent his holiday. I’m sure he would have watched the fireworks in Sydney on NYE if he was there, but there were a million other people in town so he would have been a bit hard to spot in the crowd :) Hope he had a nice break.
I thought i was ready for 2020, but turns out I was in no way prepared for any of this. ANY OF THIS.
I expect that when he retires will come down to how healthy and motivated he is feeling. I can see him sticking around well into 2021 if he stays healthy and is closing in on 50 Yusho. One major injury and he is out after the Olympics.
Personally I want to se him reach 50. Get number 50 with a perfect record and then announce his retirement as he picks up the cup.
Just when I started getting excited about the upcoming basho, this happens.
Did he not say he was aiming for 50 yusho?!
That’s clearly the proof he didn’t seriously mean it
Which? That he’d get 50? Or retire this year?
The 50 wins
I think he meant the 50 wins when he said it, but, according to Chris Sumo, Hakuho subsequently stated that he had set that 50-win goal while caught up in the elation of win #43, and he backed away from it.
I’m not taking either statement seriously.
Note, though, that nothing in the first part (the top video, where you see his passport) relates to the retirement. I saw that video with that title, and I played it a dozen time and the statement wasn’t there. It was only in the second (mini-golf) video that he spat that out.
In the first video, he merely explains the reason why he was willing to relinquish his Mongolian citizenship. “There is a selfish part in it – for me and for my career – but there are also my children and my uchi-deshi to consider. I’ll be able to raise new deshi as an oyakata”.
Nevertheless, I think the blurted-out statement must have been serious, because no veteran rikishi throws the word “intai” around. They usually refer to their future, not-currently-decided-upon retirement using oblique terms.
Aaaaaw, i’m in Sydney and didn’t bump into him (luckily?). I think i would have melted into a fan boy puddle if i had seen him though….last chance on the dohyo this year then…
This saddens me, but there must be something about his health that we don’t know. I doubt we ever really know the whole picture concerning injuries and health.
I’m not sure there’s something really hidden, otherwise he wouldn’t go on winning zensho yushos (last Basho can almost be considered zensho, his loss against Daieisho was so cheap). He’s just old, will be considerably less motivated after the Olympics, and more injury prone (knees, toes). And let’s add his irreversible arm injury.
In what way was Hakuho’s loss to Daieisho cheap? Looked like a solid bout to me.
Yes, I just watched it as I couldn’t recall anything nefarious by Daieisho. Daieisho had a stellar tachiai and pushed Hakuhō out. It was quick but it sure wasn’t cheap.
I guess I meant the known injuries may be worse than we knew.
How old is Hakuho’s oyakata and how is his health? I wonder if there is an issue there that would put pressure on Hakuho to retire?
Miyagino seems to be healthy. He is 62 years old and has around 3 years until the mandatory retirement age.
My own conjecture is that, as this statement came right when Hakuho came back from his rare family vacation, the reason behind it is family related – probably his wife is tired of the lonely life of a rikishi’s wife, and doesn’t want him to tempt faith and end up retiring only when he is permanently damaged.
Hakuho wouldn’t be the heir, anyway… He would get his own kabu in his name, right?
In the event that he decides he wants a regular kabu as Chiyonofuji did or if the NSK decides not to offer him a lifetime membership under his own name (hard to imagine but they do what they want) he’s got a yokozuna’s five year grace period and probably has dibs on the Miyagino name.
Yes. Miyagino said he was “keeping it temporarily for someone worthier” when he got the kabu back from Kanechika. At the time, of course, Hakuho has not yet met the ichidai-toshiyori criterion.
I think Hakuho plans for Enho to inherit the Miyagino kabu. He kind of implied that a woman who marries Enho will end up an okami-san, in one of their endless TV appearances. Enho has not yet met the criteria for that but he has a good chance to. Maybe even this year.
In any case, even if Hakuho gets the ichidai, it doesn’t mean he can’t inherit the heya. It just means it won’t be Miyagino beya anymore.
This year? It always surprised me how quickly Endo got his and I wondered if he cashed in a lot of that kenshokin for accelerated position because it seems many others with longer history and higher rank don’t have that…like Goeido.
Whether he’ll be able to buy a kabu this year is another matter. If he stands to inherit the Miyagino share, he won’t be buying it until Miyagino retires anyway. But he can become Komusubi and wrestle a basho in that rank this year, and that will qualify him for a kabu. The great danger at his size is that he won’t spend enough time in Makuuchi, though for inherited shares the criterion is more lenient (12 basho).
Who knows. John Gunning thinks he will, some Japanese journalists think he won’t, because he’s been naughty. It’s the NSK board’s decision, to the best of my knowledge.
I was assuming that someone as dedicated to the sport as him would prefer to inherit a name and be part of an ongoing legacy rather then have a name that ends with him.
But who knows, I was shocked to hear such a direct statement from an active rickshi, I swear if you asked most of them on camera what they thought of the weather they would just mutter something about doing their brand of sumo.
Consider: Taiho, Kitanoumi and Takanohana were every bit as dedicated to the sport as he, and they accepted the ichidai. Chiyonofuji’s refusal was a surprise.
Hakuho is dedicated to the sport – but also dedicated to his own brand (The Hakuho Cup, Hakuho Rice, etc. – and of course, he has taken Hakuho Sho as his real name now. Musashimaru and Akebono did the same, though. I think it’s a Yokozuna privilege of some sort, as Tomozuna oyakata (Kyokutenho, Japanese name Ōta, after his former stablemaster) and Naruto oyakata (Kotooshu, Japanese name Andō, his wife’s name) have not done so.
I don’t know enough about Taiho and Kitanoumi to have considered them and Takanohana seems like he was…..not a great decision-maker about a lot things, so I don’t really know that Chiyonofuji’s refusal was considered surprising.
I believe Chiyonofuji was specifically aiming to obtain the Kokonoe name and heya which he couldn’t have done with ichidai status.
(I don’t mean he couldn’t have been head stablemaster at the heya, only that it would no longer have been named Kokonoe-beya; I believe the name itself had sentimental/traditional value to him.)
He couldn’t have the Kokonoe name if he had an ichidai name. But why not the heya? Takanohana inherited Futagoyama beya and it became Takanohana beya. You don’t actually have to branch out if you’re an ichidai.
Hee hee, you replied in an interface that didn’t involve looking the blog directly, eh?
That’s an interesting point, retiring when he can still actively train his deshi would be a good motivation to leave early, that and being able to retire on his own terms and timeline.
I wonder how Kisenosato feels about his less then glorious retirement and if it would have been better to leave after his only “successful” comeback basho.
I think at the time he, and many of his supporters, deluded themselves that he was now OK. There was this artist who designed a new set of kesho mawashi for him after that and all.
Was that the “Fist of the North Star” set? They were so stunning, it’s a shame they will not see anymore use.
No, it was an abstract design. He got to use it a bit in Jungyo etc.
Hakuho turns 35 on March 11th. I think that gives him a shot at the record for “oldest Yokozuna to win a basho” sometime toward the end of 2020. (lksumo posted that age on a different thread). Hakuho stated early in his Yokozuna career his opinion that a great Yokozuna is one who continues to win for a long time. Adding that oldest Yokozuna record would be a nice but non-essential footnote to his tally.
With the exception of the the 69-straight record, Hakuho owns or shares all the major modern records. Safely assuming that 69-straight is now out of reach, it’s just increments to the major records and picking up a few minor records. Then all the personal reasons (Olympics, pride, good of the sport by giving the current youngsters someone to beat).
If the time is not already here, it won’t be long before his coaching will become the more important contribution to the future of the sport than anything he can still accomplish under the lights.
I take his recent statement as a recognition that what we all know will happen sometime, is now coming into view.
Wishing him a long, happy and productive life after intai (whenever that happens).
Even the Olympics “goal” has evolved. Originally, he wanted to compete with sumo as a trial sport. That was nixed. Now, he’s not even Mongolian anymore and that is understandably a sore spot. I still can’t get over that. Of all the stuff he’s gone through or all the things he did…they made him give up his national identity. That’s gotta be hard. I know others have done that, like Naruto, but damn. HE GAVE UP HIS NATIONAL IDENTITY. Maybe questions of identity and self carry more weight with me of late but wow.
Carrying the torch? OK, several rikishi are doing that. Dohyo-iri at the Olympics Opening Ceremony would be cool, if that’s still a possibility. I totally agree, I look forward to seeing the leader he will become at his own stable.
Hey, it is bound to happen…sooner or later. The ultimate competitor. A dominant force on the dohyo. Such awe-inspiring talent! Like all the previous great Yokozuna before him…Hakuho is truly immortalized. His legacy will stand the test of time (as long as there are civilizations, that is!). If 2020 is his swan song, then it has been an absolute treat to watch this giant of the sport display his skills to the highest peak! Hopefully, he will be able to attend all six bashos this year, but we will see how that goes.
Late to comment here, but the power vacuum this will leave in the sport cannot be understated. No one wrestler is ready to fill his proverbial shoes. We will see moderate chaos in the list of winners for the next 2-3 years once Hakuho is gone, moreso even than 2019. The Yokozuna hopefuls are just that; they are not ready and need time and wins to prove themselves the best. And the current sanyaku group does not inspire allusions of greatness, either by resume or injury woes. Sure, sumo might be entering an unsettled period that will likely end up with a prolonged no yokozuna period, but it will be closely fought and fun to watch.\