The Torikumi is up and it ain’t pretty. Lots of missing names. We need to add Kokonoe and Tomozuna stables to the kyujo list. Hat tip to @Hakkeyoi_Sumo for noticing that while I was looking at the match-ups. The complete list of kyujo is long:
Late breaking news is the sudden intai of a Sadogatake wrestler, Kotokantetsu, an eight-year veteran at the stable in Jonidan. Given the ultimatum of participate or quit, he decided to quit rather than risk getting Covid. He may be thinking he’d be better off at home in Shiga-ken where the number of cases is still rather low. They’ve had a cumulative total of 1424 cases and 14 fatalities in the prefecture.
Meanwhile, the matchups are pairing off favorites vs favorites…who to root for? Takakeisho starts his rope run against Mitakeumi. Shodai faces Hokutofuji. The joi will just about reach Juryo by the end of this thing. Oh boy. Someone needs to go redo the dohyo matsuri a few times. Purify that sucker! I’m afraid to look at my bingo card. It may look like Swiss cheese!
Pressuring athletes who are at increased risk for Covid complication to compete during a pandemic, with fans in the arena, or retire? That’s not ok.
Sympathies and respect to Kotokantetsu, and all the other rikishi who may not feel like they’re in a position to push back.
Agreed.
No Chiyomaru. No Chiyoshoma. No Chiyonoo. No Chiyotairyu. No Waka bros. No Hakuho and none of his students. It just won’t be the same.
Good on you Kotokantetsu. No need to sell your dignity to appease old men.
I agree wholeheartedly with, kuroboshi & Sleiman. Also, I understand where you’re coming from, Yamiumi. This is getting really bad, folks. Look, I’m all for sumo…but this is getting to be a real matter of life and death, here. Thanks Andy for reporting this very urgent news.
I suppose it was always likely that one of the megabeya would fall. The more wrestlers you have the more potential positives. Additionally, the big stables have lots of sekitori, ex-sekitori and coaches: that means wives, girlfriends, kids, apartments etc, so you have many more lines of transmission.
Ok, I’ll say it. The basho should be canceled. Barry is right that it is a matter of life and death, and tigerboy has outline the vectors of transmission. Tokyo and Japan are seeing their highest cases of COVID. Holding the basho is asking for bad trouble.
I realize the Sumo Association is in reduced circumstances. If they had some exclusive content or sumo related documentary (where’s Ken Burns?) I would certainly pay to watch, as I’m sure many of us would. Maybe logo items with a sumo figure fighting a COVID virus? (Hey, they’re round like tadpoles!) There may be limitations to their fund raising that I am not aware of.
If it is canceled I’ll pick a past basho to stream daily. Any suggestions?
They actually do have exclusive content – their historical archive, which they are offering through YouTube subscription. I’m not too keen about this, though, as I think they should be selling merchandise, not heritage.
Agree. Merchandise would bring in huge amounts. I would by a Takayasu t shirt or hat, etc. Pro sports around the world cash in on logo merchandise.
They do have merchandising, but it’s not anywhere near the western scale. The official goods are only sold at the Kokugikan, or online on the Kokugikan shop – which only delivers inside Japan.
The mental nous to adapt and exploit opportunities seems to be missing.
The scary thing is that a single negative test does not rule out recent or low-level infection. So given 5 positive tests, I’d guess there’s one or two they missed 👀
There remain just 19 active juryo. Four of these are Kise, which means each Kise wrestler has only 15 potential juryo opponents for their 15 days. One non-Kise injury in juryo and scheduling becomes . . . interesting.
Some of this will be dealt with by division cross-over bouts, but yeah…