Welcome to the Makushita yusho race! The format will be familiar to fans of USA college basketball or other sports with single-elimination tournaments. At the start of the basho, the 120 or so third-division rikishi are paired up in rank order. The winners continue on in the yusho bracket. Each round unfolds over two days, with the 7-0 champion usually crowned on Day 13. Disallowed pairings of rikishi from the same heya and other complications can occasionally lead to a playoff, potentially letting one-loss rikishi back into the race. A 6-1 wrestler took the yusho 14 times in the 149 basho since the start of 2000. All 14 were playoffs, with 6 to 9 rikishi taking part. Four additional playoffs during this period paired 7-0 wrestlers.
After 4 days of action, two rounds have been completed, and we have 30 undefeated rikishi. They will be paired up in rank order for round 3, with most bouts already scheduled for Day 5 and a few projected to take place on Day 6. The bracket is below. The only slight departure from rank order so far is all the way at the bottom, where the two Ms60 tsukedashi debutants, Goshima and Fukuzaki, both hail from Fujishima beya and had to be split up. Since we’ll have only fifteen 3-0 rikishi moving on to round 4, the bracket will be filled out by the highest-ranked undefeated Sandanme wrestler.
In addition to the two aforementioned Ms60TD, there are quite a few notable names in the 2-0 group. We have former sekitori Tochimaru, Akua, Tochimusashi, Enho, Kawazoe, and Daishomaru, as well as interesting prospects such as Ikazuchido, Nagamura, Satorufuji, Seihakuho, Matsui, and Tokitenran. I’ll be back with a report on who makes in to the Sweet 16 in a couple of days! In the meantime, please comment so I know someone reads these 😅
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I‘m always reading your Makushita reports (great, that U begin them after round 2 already this time) and I have two questions:
– Do U know anything about the two M60TD? Might they be contenders?
– How is it possible that there have been 7-0 playoffs? In a field of 128 sportsmen, seven rounds should be enough to eliminate all but one of them.
To answer the second question first, I’d assumed they were same-heya rikishi, but that turns out to be only one out of four! In the other 3 instances, they could have matched the 6-0 guys head-to-head as far as I can tell, but instead opted to give each a 5-1 opponent, possibly because the rank difference was large? I haven’t seen them do it recently no matter the rank difference, so maybe something changed about their philosophy… https://sumodb.sumogames.de/Query.aspx?show_form=0&form1_wins=7&form1_year=2000-now&form1_yd=on&form1_ms=on
I‘ve now looked into the 2016.05 basho from your query and I saw that Onosho had to fight in Juryo when he was 6-0! I guess might be the not-stablemates explanation.
Thanks a lot.
That’s very unusual though, when there were 4 5-0 guys, to use one of them in Juryo; not sure why they felt the need to do that on that specific occasion and not since. The earlier ones apparently did reflect a different philosophy: http://www.sumoforum.net/forums/topic/34111-trivia-bits/?page=81&tab=comments#comment-533714
Ah, very interesting. Thanks again.
As for the two debutants, I don’t think they’re Onosato-level prospects, but they are fairly highly touted. Fukuzaki has the distinction of being the first high school MsTD, after they recently changed the qualification criteria. Lots of info on them in this thread: http://www.sumoforum.net/forums/topic/44046-new-recruits-haru-2025/
Great, thanks.
Btw. four rikishi have won the Makushita yusho from Ms60TD, a year later three of them were in Makuuchi while the fourth was still in Makushita. His highest rank would be Komusubi for one basho, while the other three all became Ozeki.
You can throw in Yokozuna Wajima, they just called it Ms60OB back then.
Thanks for the insight! I wish there was more coverage on this division
How can I express my gratitude? Very happy to get this insight to a procedure, which was quite opaque to me!
You’ve just expressed it :)
Ikazuchido! Let’s go!
Exciting, nice to see Neri (Ikazuchido) already half way to Kachi Koshi! Enho also. Let’s go Sumotori who look like Judo players!!!
Glad to see these posts return! Onward to the Sweet 16! Who are your current picks to win the yusho?
Of those who’ve made it to 3-0, I’ll have my eye on Akua, Enho, Kawazoe, Goshima, and Fukuzaki. We have two same-heya pairs here (I haven’t checked all the other heya), which could make things interesting.