As the humans all hide from the Corona Virus, the algorithms are running the internet. This morning while checking on Tachiai’s Facebook page, I was alerted that we were in violation of Facebook’s community standards for nudity and indecency. The offense? It seems to he…
Kisenosato.
Now granted, toward the end of his career, he did get quite flabby, and his chest did get a bit wobbly. But come on you dopey algorithm (I refuse to call such nonsense AI), these are sumo wrestlers.
So if Facebook readers no longer see our posts, it’s because some stupid computer program is not happy with Kisenosato.
Courtesy of the magic that is YouTube, some enterprising soul has encoded and uploaded a segment covering Asanoyama’s promotion ceremony. For your viewing pleasure!
Together with Asanoyama’s Ozeki promotion, the new sekitori have been announced. As expected, there are 3 promotions from Makushita to Juryo: Ms3e Asabenkei (6-1), Ms3w Fujiazuma (5-2), and Ms4e Chiyonoo (5-2). None are young rising stars—they are between 28 and 32 years old, all have been in the paid ranks before, and the last two have been in Makuuchi.
The corresponding demotions are not announced, but it’s easy to guess that going down to Makushita are J10 Yago (4-11), J12 Asagyokusei (5-10), and J13 Tomokaze (0-0-15). Missing out on promotion due to lack of available slots is Ms2w Kotodaigo (4-3).
Reports from Tokyo today that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the International Olympic Committee have agreed to postpone this year’s 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The hope is to re-schedule the games for the summer of 2021, provided the threat of COVID-19 has been controlled by then. This move marks the biggest pandemic triggered postponement or cancellation in the world of sports to date, and comes on the heels of multiple national olympic teams requesting cancelation or postponement of the games. This is a huge blow to Japan, that has spent billions of Yen preparing for the games, building stadiums and venues, and Japanese businesses across the country, who had been gearing up for the massive influx of world tourists to enjoy the games.
For the world of sumo, it’s open knowledge that Yokozuna Hakuho was seeking to crown his matchless career with a ceremonial dohyo-iri at the Tokyo games this summer, after which it was expected he would retire. With the delay of the Olympics until next year, this throws the entire time table into doubt. Hakuho boosters would rightly reply, “Well, he can just stay in the sport and continue to dominate”. But as we saw at the end of Haru, Hakuho was physically struggling, though he continued to dominate. Sumo is an intense, combat driven sport, and the damage to the human body of years of competition is cumulative. We can imagine that Hakuho’s skill has not decreased on bit, but his body may be telling him that he is nearly done. The sumo public has no insight to just what challenges he faces every day he competes.
Team Tachiai hopes the re-scheduled Olympics in 2021 take place in a period of celebration as the world emerges from the pandemic, and the public across the globe turn to international sporting competition with hope and enthusiasm.
