It’s almost that magical day that sumo fans wait 2 months for: The Japan Sumo Association will release the ranking list for the Natsu tournament, which starts 2 weeks from today. Tachiai will bring you the details as soon as it’s posted (we expect it in about 48+6 hours), and if you want to read through master prognosticator lksumo’s forecast you will find it here. The banzuke comes out on Tuesday. (Hat tip Herouth…per now deleted tweet.)

This will be the first banzuke where we see Takakeisho as an Ozeki, and we will see Tochinoshin reduced to a rank we call Ozekiwake – he is a Sekiwake, but 10 wins returns him to Ozeki. Given the brutal records of many fan favorites, we anticipate a large amount of churn when the Banzuke is published today. We expect to see micro powerhouse Enho make his Makuuchi debut, and for the spheroid known as Chiyomaru to return to the top division. But die hard fans want to know who will fill in the top division’s joi-jin, and we will be tracking new ranks for all of our lower division ones to watch. Check back soon for all of the glorious details.