THE GREATEST SPORTSMAN YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF
In the world of sumo wrestling, one man stands the tallest. And he is not known by many outside Japan. Meet Hakuho Sho, who takes the stage today in Tokyo
On the evening of July 21, 2017, a Friday, a 6 ft 4in, 156 kg man entered a clay-and-sand wrestling ring in Nagoya, Japan, hoping to make history. Facing him was a 6 ft 1.5 in, 182 kg man whose only wish for the bout was that he shouldn’t lose. The former was Hakuho Sho, a Mongolian-born sumo wrestler, who, if he won that day, would cross 1,047 career wins, making him the ‘winningest’ sumo wrestler in history. His opponent was Takayasu Akira, a halfJapanese half-Filipino rikishi (the Japanese word for sumo wrestlers) who had been promoted to ozeki, or champion – the second highest title in Sumo – only two months earlier.
At 31 degrees Celsius, it was a warm day by Japanese standards. But the full capacity crowd at the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium did not mind. They wanted to witness something memorable, be part of history. A profusely sweating Hakuho entered the fighting arena to the audience’s roar.
Both fighters – wearing their customary deadpan expression – went to their respective corners and drank the chikaramizu, the power water, and wiped their mouths with the chikaragami, the power paper (a mandatory ritual in grand sumo competitions). Then, they did the shubatsu, or a purification ritual in which salt is sprinkled on the dohyo, the revered sumo wrestling ring. Once inside, both men squatted, clapped their hands, showed each other empty palms to signify they are not carrying any weapon, rose, raised their right legs as high as they could and stomped them as loudly as they could on the ring to drive away evil spirits. They repeated this twice. Sumo is nothing if not a series of rituals devised close to 2000 years ago, and formalised for professional competition during the Edo period (1603-1868) in Japanese history.
THE BIG FIGHT
Once the gyoji or the referee gave the go-ahead, Hakuho and Takayasu charged with a force that could lay a regular person flat for hours. But sumo wrestlers are trained their entire life to stand up to these attacks. In the first two seconds, Hakuho moved to the right, momentarily disorienting Takayasu. The ozeki quickly regained his balance. Hakuho went straight for Takayasu’s chest and throat – a pushingthrusting move that was a distinct change in tactics for the man who usually goes for the mawashi, or the ceremonial loin cloth worn by the rikishi, to defeat his opponents. Takayasu did not give up, and for a brief four seconds came up with a counter attack that made Hakuho lose his balance. But Hakuho’s hand-eye-leg coordination is supreme. He regained his balance faster than Takayasu did, and forced him to slip back. Hakuho lunged again and pushed Takayasu over one last time. The ozeki fell in a heap on the clay-and-sand dohyo, where he stayed down for a few seconds, a defeated man. It had taken Hakuho exactly 18 seconds to effect one of the greatest moments in sumo history, and one that established him – statistically – as the GOAT, or the Greatest of All Time.
STRIKING A BALANCE
Eighteen seconds is a long time in a sumo bout. Most fights don’t last more than a few seconds because of the sheer energy required to push a corpulent opponent out of the ring or throw him down. Wrestlers get exhausted, and in many cases, just give up. It is for this reason that sumo wrestlers tend to be large, even though more weight does not necessarily mean you are assured of victory. Hakuho, for example, has maintained his weight between 154-156 kg for close to a decade, and is supremely fit.
A prevalent myth about sumo wrestlers is that they are unfit because they are obese. This is not the case. Sumo wrestlers have more or less the same amount of body fat as a common European or Asian male, even when their body mass index tends to be closer to 40, categorised by doctors as “morbidly obese”. The reason for average body fat content in sumo wrestlers is their extreme exercise regimen. Sumo wrestlers lose a significant amount of their body fat during a day’s exercise, only to regain it by overeating (they consume more than 10,000 calories every day) and sleeping immediately after their large meals, which is usually chankonabe – a protein-rich stew that helps wrestlers gain weight quickly. The cycle continues until they retire, when they change their diet to return to normal weight. Depending on how dedicated and fit you are, a sumo wrestler can fight competitively for even two decades.
Hakuho, 33, is a master of maintaining the delicate balance between weight gain and flexibility. Of late, though, he has got injured around his toes, and has missed a few tournaments in the last 18 months.
Today, May 13, Hakuho returns to the Ryoguku Kokugikan, Japan’s premier sumo stadium in Tokyo, to challenge 41 other rikishi and win his 41st yusho (championship title). If he does win, it will be another unprecedented record.
A honbasho (grand sumo tournament) is held every two months from January to November, and begins on the second Sunday. Hakuho, a yokozuna or a grand champion, has every conceivable sumo record to his name. And he is feared by his contemporaries, who prepare for weeks to face him. His exploits in the ring are as significant as those of tennis greats Roger Federer and Serena Williams, sprinter Usain Bolt or cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. In Japan, Mongolia, and across the sumo-loving world, Hakuho is the greatest there was, there is, and there will be. In India, though, where sumo is hardly watched, Hakuho is almost unknown; he is the greatest sportsperson you have never heard of.
“It’s not easy to become a yokozuna,” says Jason Harris, a Japan-based American fan of sumo who runs a YouTube channel dedicated to the sport. “Harder still to remain one for years and perform well consistently when everyone is gunning for you... when you are a yokozuna, it’s about leading by example - upholding the dignity and pride of being the best and setting the example for all the other wrestlers.”
A top division wrestler may fight a maximum of 90 bouts in a year – that’s one every four days, on average. The grind is relentless. Grand sumo tournaments are held six times a year, each lasting 15 days. In between these events, a wrestler is expected to participate in the jungyo, or a series of travelling exhibition matches often treated as training opportunities before the main tournament. Top division wrestlers are also expected to do fund-raising tours for their stables or heyas, appear on television, and take part in any event ordered by their stable master or oyakata. And then, there’s the daily training which begins at 5 am.
Washington-based Andy Martin, who, along with several other contributors, runs tachiai.org, a popular English-language blog on sumo says of the yokozuna, “(Hakuho’s great qualities are) Skill, consistency and (above all) durability... He goes beyond yokozuna status to ‘Dai-Yokozuna’, truly a great Yokozuna, if not THE greatest.”
A LEGEND IS BORN
Hakuho isn’t his real name, though; it is only his wrestling name – a shikona, which is usually given to fighters in the top two divisions. His birth name is Mönkhbatyn Davaajargal, and he was born to a famous father in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital. His father, Jigjidiin Mönkhbat is a wrestling legend in Mongolia, and the country’s first Olympic medal winner (he won a silver at the 1968 Games). He was the Mongolian equivalent of yokozuna, and held the title of Darkhan Avarga, or Invincible Champion. When Mönkhbat died in April this year, Hakuho went to Mongolia for the funeral, where his father was given state honours.
Mönkhbat had wanted his son to pursue basketball, but a young Hakuho had his heart set on becoming a sumo wrestler. At 15, his father sent him to the land of the rising sun on the invitation of Davaagiin Batbaya, another Mongolian wrestling legend who pioneered his country’s foray into sumo. But bad news awaited Hakuho in Japan; At 62 kg, he was way too light for the sport. It was only when Kyokushuzan (Bat- baya’s sumo name) intervened and wrote to a stable master that he was inducted into the Miyagino stable (one of the 50-odd heyas or residential sumo schools), where he has remained since December 2000. At the heya, Davaajargal was given the shikona Hakuho, meaning The White Peng (a Chinese mythological bird). Such was Hakuho’s determination that it took him just three months to make his professional debut at the Osaka honbasho, held every March. In three years he reached Makuuchi, sumo’s top division and three years later, in 2007, he was promoted to yokozuna, the greatest honour for a sumo wrestler. In the 2000year history of the sport, there have been only 72 yokozuna. Hakuho was the 69th.
ON THE DECLINE
There have been only three more yokozuna since Hakuho and two of them were Mongolian – Harumafuji Kohei was anointed in 2012 and Kakuryu Rikisaburo in 2014. Both had to retire on account of their involvement in two separate physical assault incidents. When Kisenosato Yutaka, a Japanese national, became the sport’s 72nd yokozuna in January 2017, there was both relief among the Japanese, and also celebrations. Several rikishi in the current Makuuchi division are non-Japanese, with fighters from Bulgaria, China, Mongolia, Georgia and Brazil dominating proceedings.
The truth is, sumo does not hold the same respect it used to in the past, thanks mainly to a 2011 match-fixing scandal that traumatised the entire nation. Twenty-three sumo wrestlers were held guilty of match fixing and expelled. The March tournament that year was cancelled, the first time since 1946 when a stadium could not be rebuilt in time after World War II. There is also rigidity in the adherence to rules dating back thousands of years.
In between the scandals and a drop in popularity (Japanese youth are taking to other sports and ignoring sumo mostly due to its relentless rigour), Hakuho seems to be waging a lone battle to bring sumo to the top of Japanese consciousness. He has even announced that he will take up Japanese citizenship once he retires so that he can become an Oyakata – a sumo elder who can also run a stable. Today, when he returns to the ring after a brief injury-related hiatus, Japan – and the universe of sumo fans – will look forward to another championship victory. It will likely rekindle the Japanese passion for the sport. Hakuho knows he owes it to himself, his fans, and his adoptive country. But more than anything – and he knows this too – he owes it to posterity.