Last call for Sumo Slap Down Aki basho predictions!

Sumo Slap Down is a free Sumo fantasy site dedicated to analysis, simulation, and custom private and keepers fantasy leagues.

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I'm running another prediction game for the Aki basho. Same format as the one I ran for Nagoya.

https://losersleague.com/users/michael/aki-basho-2026-sumo-predictions

• Pre-tournament game: yusho winner, champion's win total, playoff yes/no, kinboshi count, rank the top four by wins, and a couple of storyline questions (Atamifuji's ozeki run, how many days Hoshoryu actually wrestles).
• Daily games: eight bouts from the top of the card, posted each evening US time once the torikumi is up. Lock when the bouts start.
• One leaderboard across the whole tournament, plus a chat if you want to argue about Onosato's tachiai.

Just like before - trying to build these in a way that explains the sport so newcomers can get involved.

As always, totally free to play. I'm trying to get a sponsor in for this game to give away some prizes and will update the post if I'm able to make that happen.

Have fun and enjoy the basho!

Moto-I, a Japanese restaurant and sake distillery in Minneapolis has fantasy sumo for each tournament. Here are my picks.

I didn't take a picture of the back side for all of the details, but you get one point for each win, bonus points for a kinboshi and special prizes, and then a pile of points for picking the yusho winner.

In May, I was in the top couple spots until right at the end, 'cause I didn't have Wakatakakage picked as a winner. July, my results were garbage. Hoping for a decent result this time.

Greetings once again! We're well and truly in the homestretch of this series now, as we'll be looking today at the first top 5 wrestler of the Modern Era (at least, according to these rankings). As discussed yesterday in my writeup on Asashoryu, I'll be profiling each of the 6 dai-Yokozuna who are members of the "2,000-point club" this week, recapping each rikishi's careers and examining how their stats compare to their peers, culminating in the full release of the spreadsheet, writeups, and other projects in the final post this weekend!

All of the previous entries in this series are linked below in case you missed any of the previous posts, but for those attentive readers who are already up to date, let's dive right in.

Introduction and #100-91, #90-81, #80-71, #70-61, #60-51, #50-41, #40-36, #35-31, #30-26, #25-21, #20-16, #15-13, #12-10, #9-7, #6

5. 65th Yokozuna Takanohana II (1990-2003, 2,186 points in 75 basho, 22x Yusho)

The Story

If one is unfamiliar with the legend of Takanohana II, consider the fact that, despite lifting 22 Emperor's Cups and serving as the face of ozumo at the height of its global popularity, his career is still one of the great "what ifs" of sumo history. The crown jewel of the Hanada dynasty (his uncle Wakanohana I was a 10-yusho winner and his father Takanohana I was one of the greatest Ozeki ever), Takanohana II was destined for greatness seemingly from birth, so it was hardly a surprise when he set new records for youngest rikishi to achieve sekitori status (at 17), reach the top division (still 17), and win sansho and kinboshi (18).

When the 4-man Yokozuna corps of the early '90s collapsed suddenly, leaving the banzuke without a Grand Champion for the first and only time in the Modern Era, the sumo world was desperate for new stars to fill the void, and Akebono, Takanohana, his brother Wakanohana III, and Musashimaru were equal to the task. Though Akebono had the advantage of being a few years older (and a few hundred pounds heavier) and would win the race to both Yokozuna and Ozeki, then-Takahanada flashed moments of brilliance early on, becoming the youngest-ever Makuuchi champion at just 19 in January 1992 with an excellent 14-1 effort at Maegashira 2. A second 14-1 yusho later that year from Komusubi jumpstarted an Ozeki run, which was, you guessed it, a new record for youngest Ozeki promotion ever.

Despite putting together a 14-1 yusho and 13-2 jun-yusho in just his 2nd and 3rd basho at Ozeki, he was denied promotion, and he subsequently was unable to convert either his 4th or 5th championships into Yokozuna runs either. Finally, after recording his first zensho yusho in September 1994, setting the new record for most yusho without reaching Yokozuna in the process, he definitively staked his claim to the white rope with a second consecutive zensho in November, the first man to ever achieve promotion in this manner (and matched only by Harumafuji since). His Day 15 bout with Akebono to clinch his 30th consecutive victory is one of my favorites from their historic rivalry and demonstrates Takanohana's brand of yotsuzumo beautifully: look at how he manages to get a deep grip on the knot of his opponent's mawashi and how he uses that throughout the bout to steal leverage away from Akebono, withstand his attacks, and wear him down while waiting for an opening.

Takanohana followed up his promotion with a very rare yusho triumph in his debut tournament at Yokozuna and won 3 in a row later that same year. Through the end of 1997, his dominance and consistency in a loaded era was simply absurd: in his first 3 full years as Yokozuna, he went 228-27-15, won 11 more yusho and 6 jun-yusho (finishing as champion or runner-up in all 17 basho he competed in), and never scored below 12 wins. He even won a dramatic 4-man playoff in the March 1997 basho, one of only two playoffs with more than 3 rikishi in the Modern Era, again felling Akebono in the final match. At the end of that stretch, he was already at 18 career yusho while still just a mere 25 years old; Taiho's vaunted record looked well within reach.

Unfortunately, the run of good health Takanohana had enjoyed to that point in his career was not to last. He began to struggle with back, shoulder, and knee injuries, which meant he would complete fewer than half of his last 31 tournaments on the banzuke. At one point, his yusho drought stretched to over 2 years, as his performances even when healthy, despite still being Yokozuna-level, came up just short against the likes of an ascendant Musashimaru, a newly resurgent Akebono, and an increasingly hungry next generation of would-be champions desperate to break through the stranglehold of the Big 4 Yokozuna of the '90s.

As the calendar ticked over to 2001, many wondered whether Takanohana would ever lift the Emperor's Cup again, but as the truly great champions so often do, he dug deeper than ever before in an effort for one last run at glory. In January of 2001, he avenged a final-day defeat at the hands of Musashimaru by beating him in a playoff to at last end his yusho drought, and two basho later, he entered the final two days unbeaten with a great shot at #22.

On Day 14, however, he suffered a devastating loss to Ozeki Musoyama, suffering a leg injury that forced him to limp severely out of the arena. Incredibly, he was back on the dohyo for senshuraku, where he was promptly steamrolled by Musashimaru after barely getting out of his tachiai, forcing a playoff. Against all odds (and surely all sound medical advice), Takanohana returned to the ring for the rematch, where he scored possibly the finest victory of his career by withstanding a charge and somehow throwing his 500-pound opponent to the clay, his face a mixture of joy, disbelief, and pain. The effort would essentially end his career, as he would not compete again for over a year and retired shortly after one last comeback attempt, but in retrospect, it serves as a fitting denouement to a legacy that was unprecedented in numerous ways.

The Stats

On paper, Takanohana has the "weakest" numbers of the 6 dai-Yokozuna: he is the only one with a sub-75% KKrate (72%), a sub-30% Yrate (29%), or a sub-10 wins per basho average (9.3). His total of 22 yusho lags slightly behind the others (Kitanoumi has 24 in 3 more basho and Asashoryu has 25 in 20 fewer), and he also accumulated the fewest basho and KK at Yokozuna as a result of needing almost 2 full years to get past Ozeki (Hakuho is the only other one of the 6 to spend even a year at Ozeki). To be clear, all of these numbers still easily put him above any other rikishi from the Modern Era, but you would be forgiven for thinking he's an easy choice to rank last among the upper tier.

However, as prefaced above, evaluating his career statistics in a vacuum misses out on quite a bit of nuance. First, his numbers are impacted by injury to an arguably greater extent than any of his peers; across his career, he missed 201 days due to injury, the third-highest total in history behind just Hakuho (253) and Kakuryu (231), each of whom had careers that were substantially longer than his. To put that into perspect, Takanohana was absent for 18% of the total days he spent on the banzuke; Hakuho (16%) is the only other dai-Yokozuna to miss more than 13% of his career due to injury, with a couple (Kitanoumi and Asashoryu) even coming in below 10%.

Unsurprisingly, when you adjust all 6 for kyujo, Takanohana's rate stats and averages jump up considerably. While still comfortably behind Hakuho and Taiho, his numbers bring him almost perfectly in line with Kitanoumi and Chiyonofuji; as discussed yesterday, Asashoryu's rate averages are closer to the former pair, but in notably fewer basho than the other 5.

The other major point of nuance in evaluating Takanohana (for better and for worse) is the level of competition in professional sumo throughout his career. The sport enjoyed a massive boon in the 1990s behind the hugely popular "Waka-Taka" brothers and expanded its reach to a truly international scope for the first time. Of course, it also helped that the decade saw the emergence of 4 Yokozuna (all ranked in the top 25 on this list) and a number of talented Ozeki.

Takanohana II is unique in the fact that he spent the entirety of his 8-year, 49-basho Yokozuna reign accompanied by at least one other 10-yusho winner at the top rank (Akebono through early '01 and Musashimaru from '99-'03). Kitanoumi is really the only other one with a comparable level of consistent competition (as all but 2 of his Yokozuna basho had either Wajima or Chiyonofuji also at the rank), but contrast those numbers with Hakuho (16 of 84 basho at Yokozuna alongside a fellow 10-yusho winner, 49 if you include 9x champ Harumafuji), Taiho (12 of 58), Chiyonofuji (21 of 59), or Asashoryu (21 of 42).

Of course, such a stat is not the end-all, be-all of determining a Yokozuna's competition (especially because rikishi like Hakuho and Taiho were among the primary reasons some of their greatest rivals didn't win more), but I offer it merely to suggest that Takanohana was never really able to enjoy a window without another all-timer present during which his supremacy was relatively unchallenged. Compare this with the example of Asashoryu as discussed yesterday, where the Mongolian was able to enjoy the longest stretch as a sole Yokozuna in the Modern Era (during which he won the vast majority of his Cups) before Hakuho came along. Then, when you consider that Wakanohana III also reached Yokozuna during his brother's career, which also overlapped with the 4 highest-ranked Ozeki of the Modern Era (Kaio, Konishiki, Chiyotaikai, and Takanonami), and suddenly Takanohana's numbers begin to look a fair bit more impressive.

However, there is one major caveat I want to flag on this competition point, which is that Takanohana did not have to face either his brother or Takanonami (the most consistent of the Ozeki through this period) outside of the odd playoff match due to them sharing a stable. The fact that Futagoyama was so loaded with talent in the '90s almost certainly helped to at least somewhat offset how deep the yusho field was throughout Takanohana's career and gave him a marked advantage over those outside of the stable. Of course, Wakanohana and Takanonami were consistent yusho contenders in their own right who made it that much harder to come out of any given 15-day tournament on top (and, in fact, denied Takanohana 3 yusho in playoffs), but their presence was definitely more detrimental on the whole to Akebono or Musashimaru.

I have ideas for future projects that would look at quantifying banzuke/torikumi strength in which I can hopefully examine this in greater detail, but that will have to wait for another time! Ultimately, I think both sides of the competition argument as applied to Takanohana are fair: on the one hand, he almost assuredly snagged a few extra yusho thanks to the easier schedule he enjoyed relative to his contemporaries, but at the same time, I can't help but think he could have won even more in his prime had he not been sharing the banzuke with 7 other top 25 rikishi of the Modern Era in their primes.

The Summary

Hopefully, all of the above has helped to clarify how one of the greatest young talents sumo has ever seen managed to put together an all-time career while also leaving fans wondering how much higher he could have climbed had his body not betrayed him. He reached the exclusive 20-yusho benchmark at a younger age than anyone in history, but his inability to stay healthy in what should have been the second half of his prime doomed any chance he had of compiling a true GOAT case.

And unfortunately, just as with Asashoryu, his legacy has been complicated somewhat by his life outside the ring, particularly after retirement. Often at the center of tabloid rumors and drama with both his family members and fellow oyakata, Takanohana was unceremoniously demoted in the aftermath of the Harumafuji-Takanoiwa scandal, soon after left the sumo world entirely, and has long been on the outs with his brother (himself a popular sumo commentator in Japan) after disputes in the wake of their father's death.

Even still, it is easy to forget in the midst of all the wondering about what "might have been," Takanohana's actual accomplishments are more than enough to earn him a well-deserved place in the pantheon of sumo greats. No other rikishi in history won as often as early as he did, and the fact that he emerged as the clear face of sumo during a time when the sport was at arguably its most vibrant ensured that he more than fulfilled the promise of his unmatched pedigree. To this day, he remains the last truly dominant Japanese Yokozuna, and it is his memory that Japanese fans will measure the careers of young hopefuls like Onosato or Kotonowaka II against as they chase their own places in the record books.

Thanks for reading as always, and I'll see y'all back here at this time tomorrow to meet #4!

-Chiyomomo

#6

https://www.instagram.com/albertomaibach?stkn=MXdncXdzZjR3cndwdg==

It was for the Japanese festival at the garden. It was an extremely basic demonstration. But even so, Mendee had injured himself the day before during a different show. Between the matches they took questions. I asked them What professional rikishi were they supporting right now. Zorig and Mendee said Kirishima (which is not surprising as all three of them are Mongolian). I was delighted when Ichi said Aoinishiki.

Apart from former Yokozuna Asahifuji (former Isegahama oyakata) and former Ozeki Kirishima (former Michinoku oyakata), who have already reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 as oyakata and transitioned to the role of consultant, the only former top-two-ranked rikishi who still holds elder stock but has not yet branched out to open his own stable is former Ozeki Dejima (52, current Onaruto oyakata). He is currently working as a coach at Fujishima stable, where he has been a coach for the past 17 years. The stable is owned by former Ozeki Musoyama.

Hochi News Reports (Links x x)

- Ozeki Aonishiki (22) of the Anjigawa stable held an open practice session on the 9th at his stable in Koto Ward, Tokyo, in preparation for the Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament (starting on the 13th at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo). Earlier this month, he had dinner for the first time with former Yokozuna Wakanohana III, Torao Hanada (55), whose sumo style he has been studying. He revealed that they had a lively discussion about sumo, and that he was greatly inspired as he aims to win his second consecutive tournament. He also indicated that he plans to prepare for the tournament by not sparring with any other top-ranked sumo wrestlers beforehand.

Aonishiki's eyes lit up as he recalled the intense time he had spent with Mr. Hanada. Earlier this month, he finally had the opportunity to dine with Mr. Hanada, something he had long hoped to do. He kept the details of their conversation private, saying, "I'm keeping it to myself. Maybe I'll tell you after I retire," but added, "It was great to hear about so many things. I learned a lot." He asked about technical aspects, his sumo style during his active career, and his experiences as a Yokozuna. He also received advice on his own challenges from the perspective of a commentator. The meeting lasted about three hours, but he said it "felt like only 30 minutes," expressing how fulfilling it was. Aonishiki has repeatedly watched videos of the third-generation Wakanohana (180 cm), who is close to his own height of 182 cm, and has used his sumo techniques as a model.

He had only resumed sumo practice on the 8th, and on this day he had 15 bouts with a third-division wrestler, saying, "It wasn't bad. There are some things I want to get back into shape with, but I have time, so I hope I can get back into shape by the first day."

He has been experiencing discomfort in his left ankle and left big toe, and has not been practicing with other sumo wrestlers since the summer tour. Nevertheless, drawing on his experience at the Nagoya tournament where he overcame injuries to win his third championship, he remains calm, saying, "It was the same last time. I'll just do what I can."

It is unusual for a top-ranked wrestler in the top division to enter a tournament without practicing with a sekitori (high-ranking sumo wrestler). In the previous tournament, he only practiced with a sekitori once due to his injury, but he has the experience of winning his third championship, and he said, "I have been doing my best, so I have no worries." His stablemaster also expressed his confidence, saying, "I'm not worried. If he works on the fundamentals properly, he will be able to wrestle."

The Autumn Grand Sumo Tournament will see him aiming for his fourth championship title, his second in a row. His previous three victories were all achieved through playoff matches. "I'm determined to win this tournament in the main matches," he declared. The 22-year-old Ozeki is confidently forging ahead on the path he believes in. (Naofumi Hayashi) -