Makushita Race Semifinals, Kyushu 2025

lksumo Nagoya 2025

And then there were four. As a reminder, these were the quarterfinal matchups:

Ohata overcame Ieshima after a protracted struggle, finally pulling down his Sandanme opponent by the belt to win by uwatehineri. Ryusho was outweighed by over 100 pounds by Shiroma but used his mobility to gain an advantageous dohyo position and win by oshidashi. His heya-mate Daiyusho met a bit of resistance at the tachiai but then pushed out Hokutenkai with relative ease. Kazuma was prepared for any shenanigans by Tochimusashi, employing a soft tachiai and then completely dominating his opponent to record the third oshidashi in four quarterfinal bouts.

So we’re set for the semifinals on day 11. In the first, featuring a 31-rank difference, Ohata will fight Ryusho. In the second, Daiyusho faces Kazuma; both employ a high-power pushing game. If Ohata or Kazuma win, we’ll have straightforward title decider on day 13. But if both Ryusho and Daiyusho make it through the semifinals, they’d have to be matched with 5-1 opponents, potentially opening the door to a big playoff on senshuraku. As Andy notes in the comments, Daiyusho made it all the way to the finals in September! Come back after the day 11 bouts conclude to see how everything turned out. In that post, I’ll also take a look at the Juryo promotion picture.

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9 thoughts on “Makushita Race Semifinals, Kyushu 2025”

  1. Daiyusho featured deep in this series at Aki. I’ll need to dig into him a bit more. It’s interesting that he seems to be flourishing at a career high with those injuries in his history.

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    • You’re right, he made it all the way to the final, losing to Shimazuumi! Yet somehow didn’t make an impression on me. It looks like he was absent for 4 straight basho starting two years ago and has been doing well since returning. Maybe he got proper surgery and rehab for whatever was ailing him?

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  2. Re the invisible line between Ms5 and Ms6 when it comes to promotions, I‘ve found an exception: in Hatsu 2015 Ishiura was promoted instead of Wakanoshima. (No absence involved, though.)

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      • I think my own heuristic back then was something like “one win counts for two ranks inside the top 5, but only one rank when one guy is inside and the other outside”. So Ms6w 6-1 calculating ahead of Ms5e 4-3 wasn’t too surprising, but IIRC it wasn’t really anticipated that it would matter at all in that situation because Azumaryu was right there to save and that’s definitely something they were already willing to do back then if no decent candidates were available. (See for instance after Nagoya 2012, J12w 6-9 saved at the expense of Ms4w 4-3.)

        In general people were trying to guess at all sorts of reasons for the committee’s decisions back then. You probably remember “a candidate who would be making his juryo debut has to do a little more to get promoted than guys who’ve been there before” from your own early days of following makushita, but Japanese fans also floated ideas like “a juryo debutant will be given a second chance to prove himself if his first basho was close” (like the Nagoya 2012 case with Oniarashi), or “they try to have as many stables represented as possible, so there’s favourable treatment if it helps keep a heya’s last sekitori in juryo / create a heya’s only sekitori from makushita”.

        The invisible line between Ms5 and Ms6 has definitely been a thing for longer, though. I did my own first investigating into juryo promotions in 2004 or so (still without the benefit of Sumo DB at the time…), and at the time it already looked like something had changed around the year 2000 that introduced a bias against candidates outside the top 5 ranks. (Although it may have been the result of a long-running gradual change in attitudes, not something sudden…you know from recent years that the lack of relevant cases often makes it difficult to point out exactly when something might have changed.)

        Up to some time before 2000 things were definitely handled a lot differently, see for instance after Aki 1991.

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        • Very interesting. So, investigations we’re possible before sumoDB.
          Do U happen to know who‘s behind that great side? The suffix points to Germany.

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    • Looks like the other two 5-0 guys were near the top and from the same heya, but both lost to the much lower ranked guys who ended up in the final.

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