[sumo] [Sumo] Bad Boy of Sumo

[R. Brown]

Without the annoying blank spaces:

He arrived in Japan from Mongolia at the age of 15 and became, by many
measures, the most successful sumo wrestler of all time in a tradition
stretching back more than a millennium.

Now Hakuho Sho
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/2019/03/26/story-hakuho-sho-skinny-kid-mongolia-became-greatest-sumo/>
is
going head to head with a conservative Japanese establishment reluctant to
let him open his own training “stable” in retirement - a controversy that
has sparked a conversation around xenophobia in the national sport.

Hakuho, 36, retired from sumo last month after being plagued by persistent
knee injuries.

Commentators compared the 6ft 4in star, who had a peak fighting weight of
348lb, to Pele in football or Michael Jordan in basketball, whose absence
would leave a void at the centre of wrestling.

But along with his achievements - including 45 championship victories, the
most wins in a calendar year, and being the longest serving top rank
“yokozuna” wrestler of all time - he earned a reputation as a “bad boy” for
his apparent breaches of etiquette in the ring.

Along with challenging referee calls, his style of fighting has come in for
criticism. Some saw him simply as a rough-house wrestler who was not averse
to slapping an opponent’s face and a move that came perilously close to a
banned elbow strike.

Normally a retiring “yokozuna” would be granted permission to open a stable
on retirement as a matter of course. However, the Japanese Sumo Association
(JSA) seems to be doing all it can to avoid that outcome for Hakuho.

Leaks from the September 29 meeting of the six-man JSA panel that considers
applications for wrestlers who wish to remain in the sport have found their
way into the Japanese tabloids.

One JSA member expressed concern that Hakuho could look to build on his
already close ties to other Mongolian wrestlers
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/16/japan-grapples-sumo-scandal-veiled-underbelly-sacred-sport-exposed/>
and
elders to construct a “future power block” within the sport.



Others warned that Hakuho might bring the “bad boy” attitude from his
fighting career into retirement.

The panel has recommended that Hakuho not be permitted to open his own
stable for 10 years. One member was quoted as saying that Hakuho was
“reaping what he sowed”.

While Hakuho has kept an unusually low profile and has not commented
publicly on the matter, others have linked the reported decision to wider
problems in the national sport.

“Hakuho certainly upset a lot of people when he was a wrestler and they are
worried that he will do the same if he is allowed to run his own stable”,
said Yoichi Igawa, a journalist who covers a sport that can trace its
history back some 1,300 years.

“The sumo world is very exclusionary because its elders are deeply
traditional and only want things to be done in the ‘Japanese way’,” he
said.

“A wrestler’s nationality is a big issue, even if they have legally taken
Japanese nationality, and there is all too often the sense that a foreigner
is not able to understand all the traditions that surround the sport.”

“They will do everything they can to stop Hakuho gaining more influence in
the sumo world, claiming that it is because of his disciplinary record”.
In an editorial, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said: “There is nothing wrong
about debating what ‘yokozuna’ should and should not do. But the problem is
that many critics of Hakuho trace his ‘unsavoury’ behaviour to his
Mongolian roots and question the qualities of foreign sumo wrestlers in
general.”

Credit to The Telegraph
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://server.webtrek.com/pipermail/sumo/attachments/20211007/95c154d6/attachment-0001.html>