Hattip to Justin (@hochiyama on Twitter), after two poor performances resulting in rather concerning losses, Takakeisho has withdrawn from the Aki Basho citing his neck. Wakamotoharu will receive the default win.
He headbutted Oho pretty hard in one of his attacks yesterday. The thing is, there was nothing extraordinary about the attack. It’s a rather routine tactic in sumo and it is certainly one of the go-to tactics in his style of sumo. This does not raise serious questions about his career. It merely increases the volume of those questions that we have been asking for the past several months. He has been kyujo before for the neck and it has not healed sufficiently to allow him to compete reliably at this level. Let’s face it, he hasn’t been at keiko, much less able to compete.
But at this point there is no indication at the moment about his career plans. Now that his demotion from Ozeki is permanent, he will fall rather far into the rank-and-file. There is no news on whether he intends to use an extended kyujo (like Terunofuji or Enho) to recover enough from a lower division, or retire. Tachiai will bring updates as we get them.
Discover more from Tachiai (立合い)
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Feel like we should be still anticipating news of him picking up perhaps the vacant Minatogawa name fairly soon. Unless I’m forgetting someone, the only other names I can really think of in the ichimon who might need a share “any day now” would be Tamawashi and Takayasu. And with Minezaki less than 2 years from completing his consultancy and the recent trend of sanyo to apparently step down when a good offer comes along, perhaps they might be in an OK situation.
On paper, Takakeisho is still “not that old” at 28 years old. (We ofthen forgot how young he was when he became Ozeki)
So technicaly, he would still have room if he would decide to take maybe 6 month – 1 year kyūjō to go under chirurgy and heal whatever is wrong with what i assume is his neck. If we would think that he could after that continu to wrestle all the way to his mid thirtieth.
Problem is, we don’t even know if whatever he as for injury can really be fully heal with that ever treatment he could receive. Sometime, there is injuries, especially when it involve the spine, that can never be fully undone. They are career ending injuries that you have to live with for the rest of you life.
So yeah, because of that, i think you may be right over there Josh. Takakeisho may be looking for a Kabu. I don’t think he has one. I didn’t see anywhere mentioning he own one. But Wikipedia and SumoDB are mentioning that there is 3 or 4 currently avalaible. So i don’t think he would have a hard time to get one. Or at least “borrow” one until the one with the name he really want become avalaible from a soon-to-be-retiring elder.
Yeah, I think it’s tempting to look at Terunofuji and go “it’s possible to truly give it all up and then mount the big comeback” but what made Terunofuji’s comeback so special is that it was such a rare occurrence (for various reasons). I also think there’s so much precedent from other sports for comebacks from the type of issues Terunofuji had (football(s), tennis, etc), but with Takakeisho’s neck problem and his type of sumo it feels very difficult. Is he really coming back from an injury recovery as a yotsu guy or a Nishikigi/Myogiryu type grapper? I don’t think so. And if he reinjures his neck after that then at what point is he looking at even longer-lasting life long problems (or even CTE with the type of sumo he does)?
He apparently lives in his own sumo stable environs now, so he has the real estate, and if I were a betting man I’d imagine he and/or his shisho have been beavering away in the background making some moves to obtain a name for a while now (even though as you rightly point out he doesn’t need one immediately).
Nothing surprises me anymore but I definitely wouldn’t be surprised if he went intai now, especially if he doesn’t want to have his name listed among the rank and file in November which it will be.
With regards to injuries, we can look at the NFL or a few of the other major sports leagues. Knee injuries, or even Achilles injuries, are relatively “easy” to come back from, if you have time (at least nowadays). Time is something not available in sumo (I’m not here to argue that).
Neck injuries are very difficult to come back from. The best example I can give is Peyton Manning in the NFL. It wasn’t age that took him out, it was a neck injury. By the time he retired, he couldn’t throw ten yards. Previously, he was one of the best pure passers in the history of the game. Basically, he lost all his arm strength. Takakeisho is very similar. Since his neck injury against Ichinojo, he has continued to loose strength in his arms. His greatest weapon, the tsuppari, has been rendered nothing more than light slaps.
Who knew, an hour ago, that all three of those names might legitimately need that kabu…like tomorrow. Takayasu looked done. Tamawashi has the record but has not been impressive. That’s quite the logjam at the exit.
Tamawashi hasn’t had a good start to the tournament but I just feel like I can never back against him getting to 5-10 or 6-9 or whatever, a score that might knock him down a few pegs but enables him to continue to stretch out his career.
With Takayasu it’s tough because we’ve seen him start strong time and again and then either fade mentally out of a title challenge, fade physically out of a strong tournament, or end up kyujo on day 4. Does feel like on his day though he’s still better than just about everyone in the bottom half of the division.
Better, yes. As healthy as…no. The way that bout ended told me that I have no idea how much pain he’s in.
Change of the guard. Though I will miss him greatly, nobody made me laugh as much as Takakeisho with his audacity on the big rikshi. His goal was to make Yokozuna, its impossible now. Sure to retire
How long is this changing of the guard going to take?
Some of the previously new names are now talked about like they’re old names (Kirishima, Hoshoryu, Kotozakura).
I guess I just want “the guard” to hang around for a while.