I know some folks are still catching up with earlier action. Since there does still seem to be some chatter about the Kirishima/Takerufuji decision, I wanted to provide my quick perspective. Rather than focusing on where and when the two guys landed, I rewound a few beats to where you clearly see Takerufuji prone and in the air while Kirishima is still executing his throw with his foot on the ground.
Who won? They made the right call. It wasn't a great explanation but it was the right call.
— 立ち合い (@tachiai_blog) May 21, 2025
Kirishima, in the conservatory, with the kubinage. pic.twitter.com/fDmvPcxKXP
Anyway, I think the decision was right. If instead of saying, “Takerufuji was falling first,” if he had used the word “shini-tai,” there wouldn’t have been any controversy. There’s no coming back for Takerufuji from this position.
On to Juryo, Kusano was overpowered by a determined Tomokaze and sent sprawling from the dohyo. Tomokaze earned his kachi-koshi and Kusano fell to 9-2. Kusano still leads, alone. But now Tomokaze joins the chase pack with Wakaikari, Kotoeiho, Oshomi, and Tohakuryu, all on 8-3. Kusano will face Kotoeiho tomorrow.
NHK Videos are here: Juryo, Makuuchi Part I and Part II.
Makuuchi Action
Asakoryu (8-3) defeated Roga (7-4). Roga had Asakoryu on the ropes but Asakoryu was able to pivot and escape out the side. He then pulled Roga’s left arm and forced Roga to the ground. Kotenage.
Kotoshoho (5-1-5) defeated Ryuden (4-7). Kotoshoho pulled on Ryuden’s arm and rotated. Ryuden tried to keep up but his right foot touched outside the bales. Kotenage.
Kayo (5-6) defeated Sadanoumi (7-4). Kayo held Sadanoumi up at the tachiai then quickly shifted left and pulled Sadanoumi forward. As Sadanoumi rushed by, Kayo followed up and shoved him out. Okuridashi.
Takanosho (7-4) defeated Tochitaikai (3-8). Tochitaikai pulled straight back and ran out of real estate, flying off the dohyo before Takanosho fell forward. Gunbai Takanosho. No mono-ii. Pivot while you pull, damn it. Oshidashi.
Endo (6-5) defeated Tamashoho (4-7). Endo’s tsuppari was more powerful than Tamashoho’s. Oshidashi.
Midorifuji (2-9) defeated Shonannoumi (3-8). Midorifuji pushed Shonannoumi and then pivoted to the left. Shonannoumi rushed forward and Midorifuji slapped Shonannoumi to the ground as Shonannoumi lurched forward. Hatakikomi.
Kinbozan (7-4) defeated Atamifuji (7-4). Kinbozan’s powerful thrusts sent Atamifuji packing. Tsukidashi.
Onokatsu (7-4) defeated Nishikigi (5-6). What happened to Nishikigi? He looked great the first five days but today Onokatsu got a left-hand deep on his belt and drove him through the ring and muscled him over the edge. Yorikiri.
Tokihayate (6-5) defeated Churanoumi (2-9). Churanoumi pressed forward into Tokihayate but Tokihayate kept changing direction to stay well within the bales. Tokihayate grabbed onto Churanoumi’s right arm and pulled him, then threw him over the bales and into the crowd. Instead of using the arm bar, grabbing the opponent’s arm and pulling them forward has become en vogue lately. Kotenage.
Tobizaru (6-5) defeated Shishi (2-9). In keeping with fashion, Shishi tried for another Kotenage but Tobizaru increased his tsuppari to force Shishi back and keep him at bay. Tobizaru pressed forward, then released and quickly pulled Shishi down. Hatakikomi.
Oshoma (8-3) defeated Meisei (7-4). Meisei fell for Oshoma’s change of direction and slapdown. Lots of these slapdowns, too. Hatakikomi.
Halftime
Chiyoshoma (3-8) defeated Shodai (3-8). Chiyoshoma pulled Shodai down by his right shoulder. It looked like the World’s Slowest Slapdown, somehow. Katasukashi.
Abi (7-4) defeated Gonoyama (3-8). Abi pulled and pivoted right to stay inbounds. Abi’s pivot also allowed him access to Gonoyama’s belt, so he pulled him forward while slapping him down. Uwatenage.
Oho (4-7) defeated Tamawashi (3-8). Oho hung in with Tamawashi’s tsuppari. As Tamawashi pressed forward, Oho shifted left and pulled Tamawashi forward. Hikiotoshi.
Wakamotoharu (5-6) defeated Hiradoumi (4-7). Hiradoumi pulled but Wakamotoharu kept up the forward pressure and drove Hiradoumi back and out. Oshidashi.
Sanyaku
Ura (3-8) defeated Takayasu (2-9). Ura pressed Takayasu to the bales after a nice, long brawl. Ura then defeated by pulling Takayasu’s shoulder from behind, somehow. The yobidashi had to take some time to consult the kimarite manual. Ultraman defeated Okuniyama with this back in Osaka in March. But interestingly, Ura pulled this same technique off earlier this year against Takayasu at hatsu-basho. Tsutaezori.
Kirishima (8-3) defeated Ichiyamamoto (4-7). Kirishima shifted left and pulled Ichiyamamoto’s arms forward. Hatakikomi.
Daieisho (8-3) defeated Takerufuji (4-7). Strong thrusts from Daieisho but he shifted to the left and slapped Takerufuji down. Hatakikomi.
Kotozakura (7-4) defeated Aonishiki (8-3). What do you know? Ozeki Kotozakura showed up for a few important seconds. Kotozakura pulled after the tachiai, putting himself in peril but he resisted at the bales. As Aonishiki tried to pull on Kotozakura’s belt to throw the Ozeki, Kotozakura locked onto Aonishiki’s arm and pulled him down to the ground. Kotenage.
Onosato (11-0) defeated Wakatakakage (8-3). Onosato had to work out today against Wakatakakage. Onosato pressed forward but Wakatakakage resisted at the bales and charged forward, driving Onosato back to the other side of the ring. Onosato grabbed the back of Wakatakakage’s belt and as Wakatakakage tried his own underarm throw, Onosato fell forward into Wakatakakage, crushing him out. Yoritaoshi.
Hoshoryu (9-2) defeated Hakuoho (8-3). Wow. Hoshoryu escaped today. Hoshoryu pulled but Hakuoho played it perfectly. Hakuoho adjusted to Hoshoryu’s shift and pressed him to the bales. The Yokozuna had to squeeze out of danger and run to his left. Hakuoho was in hot pursuit. Hoshoryu pivoted at the bales and charged into Hakuoho who appeared to have overrun by half a step and his knee buckled as he tried to adjust and fell backward. Basically, instead of the Yokozuna winning with some fancy kimarite, Hakuoho lost by falling on his butt. That’s got to be a bummer for Hakuoho. He could probably taste that kinboshi. Koshikudake.
Wrap-up
I should have titled this section, “Rant.” For some reason, they’re feeding Hakuoho to Onosato tomorrow. That bout will replace a sanyaku bout on Onosato’s card. It just doesn’t seem necessary. Sure, he’s Hakuoho and he’s a solid rikishi having a good tournament. But he’s M7 with 8 wins. Who will he replace? Kirishima, a Sekiwake with 8 wins? Daieisho with 8 wins? Surely not Kotozakura, an Ozeki with seven wins.
After tomorrow’s questionable Hakuoho pairing, Onosato will have three fights remaining. There are four Sanyaku whom he has not fought. His final four days should look like, S-S-O-Y. Instead, it will be M7-S-O-Y. And it’s not like either of these Sekiwake are having a bad tournament, either. Kotozakura is the one who’s “underperforming” but he still has seven wins!
WTK demonstrated why most sanyaku bouts are at the end of an Ozeki or Yokozuna’s fight card. These are the most difficult competitors and present the biggest challenges, especially to a guy who is looking for promotion to the sport’s highest rank. You want him to fight all of the best guys. Tossing a mid-tier maegashira in there at the expense of a Sekiwake or, potentially, an Ozeki bout seems unwise. But I’m not “the decider.” My role here is as “the second guesser.”
Meanwhile, Aonishiki will face Daieisho. They also brought Oshoma up to face Wakatakakage. Yokozuna Hoshoryu is the lone competitor two-wins back of Onosato. He will face Kirishima tomorrow. Kotozakura will face Ichiyamamoto. He has already fought both Komusubi and Kirishima, so he can still fit the remaining Yokozuna, Ozeki, and Sekiwake into his schedule. His strength of schedule might end up looking more challenging than Onosato’s!
Well, we will still have another great day of sumo tomorrow. And the Onosato vs Hakuoho bout will probably be interesting.
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An easy solution to these scheduling problems, whose victims currently are Hakuoho and Aonishiki, would be to decide the whole 2nd week matches after the days matches have happened. Instead it is usually done only for the matches in the last weekend.
Very true. As it is, despite Andy‘s rant, they have done everything right, I think.
Hakuoho and Aonishiki came both very near to upset wins today and that would have made them the only remaining challengers. One could then have asked why they give Onosato a foe against whom he is 6-0 instead of Hakuoho.
There have been times recently where they didn’t decide the matchups for several days in the final week until after the bouts were done, but yes it does seem odd with how many highly ranked wrestlers are sitting on solid winning records that they scheduled two days out. Maybe they want to put Miyagino Oyakata’s star pupil through the gauntlet as an additional bit of punishment before they let him have his stable back?
I think ever since the Tokushoryu Yusho they try to take down the maegashira contenders earlier and keep the flexibility to throw them against Sanyaku opponents, This can be a bit punishing for lower ranked well performing rikishi. If they would schedule the second week on nakabi, that would become even worse.
I think they are overdoing it a bit by pulling up Hakuzoho and Aonishiki again despite being 3 behind, but you could argue that this at least gives them the chance to influence the yusho race themselves.
I was not suggesting scheduling the whole 2nd week on nakabi. On the final weekend the next day matches have been decided after the current day matches have been fought. The same method should be followed the whole 2nd week so that the rikishi most relevant to the yusho race go against the leaders.
Hello.
Thank you for your analyses, which I follow daily.
About the Kirishima/Takerufuji fight, I agree with Andy: Takerufuji was clearly shini-tai (dead body); the kabai-te (defensive hand) rule was, it seems to me, correctly applied in Kirishima’s favor.
My thoughts on the onosato achedule, if onosato is promoted there will be one ozeki. By keeping the sekiwake scedules light the current sek get better scores and are on ozeki runs so will soon fill the ozeki gap.
By the way, if there are 2 yokozuna and one ozeki, which yokozuna becomes the yokozuna ozeki, is it yokozuna west?
It is the lowest ranked Yokozuna, and they slot in on the West side of the Ozeki line iirc.
Yes, you are correct that with 2 Yokozuna and one Ozeki, the West Yokozuna will be the Yokozuna-Ozeki. I think Kakuryu was the most recent example: https://sumodb.sumogames.de/Banzuke.aspx?b=202003#M
Sadanoumi was about to be pushed out from behind by Kayo.. and desperately he tried to bump Kayo with his rear butt.
I wonder what the kimarite should be, if that move somehow succeeded.
Oshirioshi (if pushed), oshiritaoshi (if causes a collapse). Ha!
I’m assuming the plethora of “grab the arm instead of using the arm bar” moves is to prevent injuring other rikishi. There’s probably more opportunity to set that kind of thing up versus wrapping up an opponent’s arm in the “arm bar” too.
Glad to see Asakoryu get his KK today. He’s not “small” like Midorifuji, for example, so I think some rikishi underestimate his power.
Abi has been winning most of his matches with “bale ballet”. It’ll be interesting to see how his opponents counter that strategy in the future.
Man, I hope Hakuoho’s knee is okay. Hoshoryu was right there to check on him when he went down for good reasons.
1) I have been liking this version of the kotenage precisely because it’s less cringe-worthy and injury-prone. 2) I also hope Hakuoho’s knee is okay. The second I saw it buckle, I was like, “oh, no.” But it seemed to be a slight momentum shift and slip. He seemed okay when he got up. But yeah, fingers crossed he’s fine. 🤞
Been watching the Takayasu – Ura fight back several times and I think that Takayasu must be carrying several injuries. He isn’t producing any real power with his right arm and was slow to get up today after landing on it.
I do wonder if this might well be the beginning of the end for him.
Yeah. I think this will be his top end for a while. It may be a Nishikigi-like situation.
Irrelevant perhaps, but if Kotoshoho goes 9-1 or even 8-2 after 5 days kyujo, doesn’t he deserve a Fighting Spirit prize?
I’d think it would be a great outcome from kyujo but no.
Dont think there is a world where Kotoshoho can get any prize. Usually zou need at least 10 wins to get rewarded solely for your performance and the more experienced a rikishi is, the higher that bar gets. There are exceptions where you a price can be awardewd with just a kachikoshi, but I think that requires a win over a yokozuna and potentially other Sanyaku from a maegashira rank. Generally there is no reward for performing well from a low position unless you are fairly new or the performance is outstanding. Kotoshohos career high is M3.
Happy to see Asakoryu with a kachikoshi.
I agree with your thoughts on the scheduling. being 3 behind means that both Aonishiki and Hakuoho are basically out of the race. On the other hand yopu could argue that pairing them with Onosato at least gives them the chance to open up the yusho race again instead of relying on others. It is kinda a narrow path between giving them a chance and “ruining” their great basho. There is such a thing as momentum and at the moment they have just barely secured a kachikoshi.
Ofcourse Kirishima is 0-6 vs. Onosato, while he is just 9-11 vs Hoshoryu, but by the same argument you could give the Sekiwake only 3 behind the chance to first put dirt on Onosato.
There were a number of weird or lets say not very clean bouts today, like Wakamotoharu, Onosato and Hoshoryu.
Really happy that Oho finally put an end to his loosing streak. Now he only needs to win out. Atleast he finished his Sanyaku schedule already. Todays bout was a lot of walking backwards, but controlled and constantly pivoting, the way Andy likes.
Matching Gonoyama against Abi feels just unfair. At this point he has a worse balance problem than Onosho ever had.
The Ura bout was obviously a highlight only for this technique. My favorite match of the day was probably Asakoryu.
Juryo again looks like outside of Kusano none of the top ranks rteally want to get up. Ofcourse there are still 4 days to go, so a 6-5 could turn into a 10-5, but it looks like we will only replace those rikishi who absolutely need to go down this time.
Juryo is the opposite, where only Wakanosho is sure to go down, but we havbe 4 winning records already with potentially two more in the making. Dewanoryu fights Daiamami tomorrow and I guess Kitanowaka will get an exchange bout for his 7th match as well.
They naturally wouldn’t have paired Hakuoho and Aonishiki like this AFTER today’s fights.
But as they did it BEFORE, it was absolutely the right choice (read also Askoj‘s comment above).
I just don’t think they should have given Hakuoho to Onosato when they should have given him to Kotozakura. But I think they had to since they gave Hakuoho to Hoshoryu and Hoshoryu is still in the race. Maybe they should have not done Hoshoryu/Hakuoho and instead done Hakuoho vs Kirishima or WTK?
I‘d have liked both your propositions. Maybe they were afraid of possible later scheduling conflicts, as they don’t like to cancel one or even two of the O1-O2, Y-O2 and Y-O1 bouts on the last three days?
As long as all sumo is done the way Andy likes, I am happy. 😁 As for Juryo, Tomokaze looked good today.
‚Pivot/damn it‘: Andy, we can‘t look into their heads. We don‘t know if there is permanent dizzyness going on, like it seems to be with Endo. They sometimes don‘t want to risk their balance with a pivot, maybe. It costs some split-seconds too, if you aren’t able to release it automatically. If it’s firmly connected to your style of sumo, it must be a thing of more ease.
Great illustration of the dead body rule, a picture is worth a thousand words. Just think how Kirishimazeki would’ve fared had he not put his arm down? A broken neck, who knows? There’s a famous instance where the late Yokozuna Kitanofuji did a similar thing to protect his opponent, who was the dead man, on a throw. In Judo if an athlete goes head first while throwing it’s an automatic hansoku because they don’t want to encourage spinal injuries by allowing those types of throws. Sumo is just inherently more dangerous and its up to the wrestler to protect themselves, the rules don’t really change and that’s part of the timelessness of sumo. Anyhow, another great discussion and more action on the Dohyo. I hope someone can put dirt on the Prodigy before Sunday and it could really turn into a great day 15 with the opportunity for another playoff if the Prodigy and the Yokozuna both have the same record. That would be 3 in a row, I love bonus Sumo so that’s my dream scenario. If it happens it guarantees Onosatozeki at least a Jun-Yusho and a promotion, and it would be a great start to the new Yokozuna rivalry.
Kabai-te is the term for the allowed touching, like what Kirishima is doing in the photo.
On Andy’s rant topic, my 2 cents are that JSA are giving Onosato a leg-up (best understood by my equestrian friends) on opponents. It’s in JSA best interest to have dominant Yokozuna performance(s), so odds for this desired outcome are better for this with 2 Yokozuna rather than one….
Any favoritism would be less about dominant Yokozuna performances and more about Japanese born Yokozuna. The amount of hype the Sumo folks have put around any basho where a Japanese Ozeki is going for a rope over recent years has been quite high. The only Japanese-born Yokozuna elevated in this century was Kisenosato.
A Japanese Yokozuna would do a lot for the sport’s popularity among Japanese.