The aki basho is fast approaching and there’s just enough time to get out my analysis and findings on the previous tournament. Below is my last report card for Nagoya, focusing on the san’yaku. I’ll also have a Hoshoryu post coming out, too (quickly, I hope!).
Read on for those grades — hope you enjoy them.
Hiradoumi
Rank: Komusubi 1 West
Record: 10-5, ginō-shō
Grade: A-
Versatility is the keyword when describing Hiradoumi. He is potent with both oshi-zumo and yotsu-zumo to a degree that few other wrestlers can match. Being able to switch between thrusting and grappling styles gives him a lot of options in bouts and also helps make up for his size disadvantage.
In his bout with Abi (below), Hiradoumi initially tried to implement his yotsu game — a very good choice when facing Abi. However, after getting an elbow in the throat, Hiradoumi realized he needed to start matching Abi thrust for thrust. With his own oshi style, though, he targeted Abi’s body (not throat) and proved effective in pushing out his larger, and higher ranked, opponent.
Something similar happened against Atamifuji (which you can see below). Hiradoumi started with yotsu-zumo against the grappler. I really like how Hiradoumi grapples. He angles himself to one side to make it difficult for his opponent to complete their grip. He also uses this posture to try and get his opponents to lift a foot and make it easier to force them back. In this Atamifuji, bout, though, Hiradoumi wasn’t able to move him as far back as he would like. So he changed his plan. He scooted back and created space and then switched over to thrusts for the win.
I’m pretty excited over Hiradoumi’s potential. He hasn’t hit the highs that fellow youngsters have over the last year. But he’s been very consistent and he’s been equal to every challenge the banzuke has thrown at him, including this debut san’yaku assignment.
Daieisho
Rank: Komusubi 1 East
Record: 8-7
Grade: B
This was Daieisho’s first tournament back in the san’yaku after his brief demotion to M1. He was just OK here. His first four losses were to stellar opposition (Takakeisho, Onosato, Hoshoryu and Terunofuji). His last three losses were to guys he should do better against (Mitakeumi, Churanoumi, Oho). This tournament Daieisho continued to show us his bad habit of over-committing on a straight forward charges. That often lead to a mouth full of clay, like he got here against Hoshoryu (below).
There might be signs for optimism, though. The 30-year-old did show us some interesting evasive moves this basho. his side-step against Meisei (below) in response to a body-roll was very cool.
And he even did a henka. See that versus Shonannoumi below.
He also looked very quick on his feet, and showed an ability to recover, in his win over Hiradoumi and his very competitive loss to Terunofuji. I’m still not sold on Daieisho having ozeki potential, but I think he’ll have a chance to prove me wrong on that.
Kirishima
Rank: Sekiwake 2 West
Record: 8-7
Grade: B-
After what we saw from Kirishima in March and May (where he went a combined 6-16-8), this 8-7 in Nagoya felt like a big victory for the former ozeki. And I think it’s a victory, despite him failing to get the ten wins needed to jump right back up to his former ranking.
Kirishima is clearly still fighting hurt. However, in Nagoya, there were flashes of his usual self. We saw some of that in his Darwin Match with Tamawashi on Day 15 (below).
Tamawashi is no slouch, but this was a pretty favourable match-up for Kirishima. Even so, he had to contend with a strong thrust off the tachiai (which would have tested his healing neck). After that he did a great job of hand-fighting to take away Tamawashi’s thrusts and then get a good side-on position for the yorikiri (frontal force out).
Kirishima utilized this side-on position against Kotozakura, too, to earn one of his best when of the tournament. See that below. Note the great slap he does with his left hand to nudge Kotozakura into position.
Kirishima was smart here in knowing he couldn’t win a head-on pushing contest with Kotozakura.
Kirishima’s other big win of the basho was this hikiotoshi (hand pull down) on his longtime ‘frenemy’ Hoshoryu. Check that out below.
In this bout Kirishima caught Hoshoryu with a really nice throat thrust off the tachiai. That’s a great opening gambit to use against Hoshoryu, since it keeps his hands far away from your belt. It also sent Hoshoryu’s eyes to the rafters, which made it hard for him to notice Kirishima was pulling the rug out from under him.
One last Kirishima highlight to share. This win over Mitakeumi, where he used brute strength to get the 380 lber off his feet was a good sign that Kirishima’s body is pretty close to full health.
Onosato
Rank: Sekiwake 1 West
Record: 9-6, shukun-shō
Grade: B
This was a bit of a let-down tournament for Onosato. After winning in May and being runner-up twice before that, this tournament was very forgettable for the sekiwake (and likely future yokozuna). He wasn’t bad by any means. He just wasn’t one of the main characters this basho. Which is a first for him.
Getting off to an 0-2 start put him off the pace immediately and he just couldn’t go on long enough of a winning streak to catch up. Those first two losses were to Mitakeumi and Wakamotoharu (two you’d expect him to beat). I think he had some yusho hang over on those bouts. His next loss was to Hiradoumi, who has beaten him before. His next losses were to Gonoyama (first loss to him) and Kotozakura (who he is 1-3 against now). On the final day he lost to a highly motivated Takanosho.
His wins were OK, but he didn’t seem as cool and comfortable as he did in the last tournament (especially when it came to grappling — at times he flailed like he did earlier in his career).
It’s not all bad news for Onosato, though. I really liked how evasive he was during some matches. See below as he got both Terunofuji and Takakeisho with this one-foot pivot move.
I especially like that Onosato was able to do this with either foot. Against Terunofuji he used his left foot. It was his right against Takakeisho. Sometimes you see wrestlers favouring one side of their body over another and try and force moves on that favoured side.
Abi
Rank: Sekiwake 1 East
Record: 8-7
Grade: C
Abi squeaked through the Nagoya basho with an 8-7 to retain his sekiwake ranking. This record means he’s now hit his longest streak of tournaments at the sekiwake rank (three). There’s always a bit of luck involved with Abi, since his style is about creating chaos and his harite (palm striking) is intentionally random at times. He also benefited from a fusen (default) victory over Takayasu on Day 2. On Day 14 he also got a win over Kotozakura, which I think has to go down as a slip. As Abi was pushing Kotozakura backwards, his back foot glided across the slippery Nagoya clay and over the straw and out. If it was against anyone else I wouldn’t be so harsh, but we’ve seen Kotozakura dig his heels in on the straw and come back from positions like that a number of times. When you factor all this together, I think it’s fair to be underwhelmed by Abi’s tournament.
Technique wise Abi is more fury than form. That’s worked for him a lot lately. But I’d like to point out one area where he needs to be careful. His long thrusting arms are tantalizing targets for being grabbed and pulled. Wrestlers with good evasion can get past Abi if they snatch one of those up and then pull him forwards, while stepping around him.
Here’s Meisei achieving that (shortly after performing one of his body-rolls).
And here’s Hoshoryu latching onto an arm and then improvising a great pull down move.
Abi could sure up this vulnerability by tucking his free hand into the front of his opponents’ belts, as Kirishima does when he thrusts high.
Takakeisho
Rank: Ōzeki 2 West
Record: 5-10
Grade: D-
This was a tournament to forget for Takakeisho. His 5-10 record cost him his ozeki status, something he’s had since 2019. The bout that sealed his fate, was against Terunofuji on Day 13. See that below:
Takakeisho really tried in this bout and he got Terunofuji in a vulnerable position due to a great side-step. However, Terunofuji was a man on the mission in Nagoya, and he reacted quickly here and turned into the contact. When Terunofuji side-stepped himself, Takakeisho reacted poorly and was rather easily dumped onto the clay.
Something similar happened against Tobizaru (below).
Against Tobizaru, Takakeisho was rolled to the side and was, again, too slow to reset and get on stable footing. He actually rolled himself to the side. He’s the one who established the underhook on Tobizaru’s left arm. And I think it’s Takakeisho who tried to toss Tobizaru from that position, but Tobi was able to remove his arm from the hold and use it for the push down.
Takakeisho will often go for homerun swings when he’s not quite in the position to pull it off (most often when trying to spear someone off the dohyo).
Hoshoryu
Rank: Ōzeki 1 West
Record: 9-4-2
Grade: B-
Hoshoryu will be getting his own deep dive, which will be out in the coming days. He had an OK tournament (by his high standards).
Kotozakura
Rank: Ōzeki 1 East
Record: 10-5
Grade: B+
Kotozakura was typically excellent in Nagoya, but again fell short of seriously contending for the championship (hopefully this is a trend he can get over in the near future). In Nagoya his tournament unravelled on Day 11 when he took a loss to Kirishima. That was followed by losses to Hoshoryu and Abi, which took him out of the running for the cup.
We’ve already looked at the Kirishima bout. Kirishima did a fantastic job in that match and he’s got an excellent record against Kotozakura (12-4). The Hoshoryu bout is below:
These two really bring out the best in each other. In this instance, Kotozakura did a good job of keeping Hoshoryu off his belt, but that forced Hoshoryu to really dig deep for an improvised throw. Hoshoryu had to use a loose headlock and a tight leg hook to pull it off (only he can do this kind of thing). This moved Hoshoryu to 11-8 in their head-to-head record.
The Abi loss was due to a slip. His other losses were to Mitakeumi and Daieisho. The Mitakeumi loss was unlucky, with Kotozakura executing an uwatenage (over arm throw) but a mono-ii (judges’ review) determining he touched down ahead of Mitakeumi. The Daieisho loss was more clear cut with Daieisho rocking Kotozakura off the tachiai and then hounding him out along the boundary.
If Kotozakura could have avoided misfortune in the Abi and Mitakeumi bouts he could have finished 12-3 (to match Terunofuji), so I’m not that concerned by the fact that Kotozakura has again failed to win a championship. I feel like it’s coming for him. In this tournament he managed to get his first win over Terunofuji and he also got the better of Onosato (giving him a 3-1 record over him).
His bout with Onosato was especially exciting, see it below:
This match looked a lot like their previous match, which Onosato won on route to winning his first championship. Here’s that match:
You can see the difference between winning and losing for Kotozakura was where he placed he left knee on the throw attempt. In this most recent bout, which he won, he managed to get the knee on the inside of Onosato’s knee. He failed to do that in May and it’s great to see him learn from that mistake.
I think Kotozakura, at 26, is still improving. So I still believe his future lies beyond even the ozeki rank.
Terunofuji
Rank: Yokozuna 1 East
Record: 12-3, yūshō
Grade: A+
My thoughts on Terunofuji in August went something like this…
“Oh, I guess he’s going to give it a go…”
“Oh, he’s looking pretty good…”
“Oh, he’s looking awesome…”
“Oh, he’s still the best there is.”
I feel like Terunofuji really needed his tenth yusho before he could let himself call it a career. After this good start in Nagoya, it felt like he was going to walk through fire to try and hit that milestone here. I was expecting an immediate retirement after this. If he sticks around he may see himself playing with house money, just seeing what else he can add to his storied career before retiring. If he doesn’t retire ahead of the aki basho, I can see him doing it the next time he’s on a bad run or if an injury (old or new) just makes it not worth the effort.
A lot of what got Terunofuji his tenth yusho is mentality based. He wanted this badly and it showed. He was able to push through a pain barrier and move quicker than we’ve seen him move in some time.
Technically, I want to highlight his tachiai from this tournament.
Terunofuji is a plow. He comes forwards with a ton of power and looks to put an opponent into defence mode, immediately. When he hits first in the tachiai, his power and mass causes enough disruption to his opponent that he has a great window to establish his preferred grips, too.
Against Meisei (below), Terunofuji used one of his more basic routines. He won the tachiai battle and immediately gobbled up Meisei’s arms to prevent Meisei’s thrusts and chances of escaping.
Against Shonannoumi, Terunofuji won the tachiai battle, too (see it below). But instead of holding onto his arms, he locked up the grappler with a migi-yotsu (right arm under, left arm over). From that position he was able to get Shoannoumi back and defend against the last ditch shitatenage (over arm throw).
Against Kirishima we saw one of Terunofuji’s more advanced set-ups (check it out below). Kirishima gets rocked off the tachiai, after taking Terunofuji’s massive shoulder right on the nose. I think Kirishima instinctively wrapped his arms around Terunofuji and that allowed Teru to go for the double arm-bar, which he often uses for a kimedashi (arm barring force out). We’ve seen him lift Tobizaru from this position, causing incredible pain to his foe. He’s friends with Kirishima, though, so I think he showed mercy, transitioning to an uwatenage (over arm throw).
The above bouts illustrate that, if Terunofuji knocks you back off the tachiai and then gets a hold of you, you’re done for. The best way to compete against him is to either push him back off the tachiai (like Takanosho, Tamawashi and Shodai do) or to pull back and get him to chase you. Ura gave that latter strategy a great shot in Nagoya, watch that bout below.
This win took Terunofuji to 7-0. After this I was pretty confident he was going to win the tournament. He showed a lot of mobility in this bout and was able to stick with Ura and eventually slow him down with the migi-yotsu and execute a rather respectful yorikiri (frontal force out).
This tournament showed us that, even though he has some very good youngsters on his tail, Terunofuji is still the best the sport has to offer. He may not be around for much longer, but while he’s here… all hail the dai-yokozuna.
Thanks for reading everyone! I love profiling the san’yaku. Everyone who makes it here has such incredible technique and it’s a real thrill to examine them and try and figure out what makes them so successful.
Next up I’ll be breaking down Hoshoryu’s tournament in detail — then it’s onto the aki basho.
I really thought that was going to be Kotazakura's tournament at the start, but some bad luck and some balance issues dented that. Want that Emperor's Cup soon, think it could become one of those strange prolonged issues if he doesn't manage to win one soon.
I love watching that Ura - Terunofuji fight! And I had similar thoughts as the Yokozuna proceeded through the tournament. Oh yeah, still the best.