Sumo is back! And so is my daily coverage over on Bloody Elbow. Head there now to see the results for Day 1, along with some highlights and my quick analysis (link).
There were some great matches to get us started and I hope that trend continues. I also hope everyone can stay healthy enough to compete for the next 15 days.
There are lots of great narratives playing out in this tournament, many of which are on collision courses (those are always my favourites). I mentioned those in my preview for this tournament, which was published on BE a few days ago (link).
For those of you who are new around here (welcome and thank you, by the way), you’ll be getting one of this emails each day — usually around 10 a.m. ET. I won’t spoil any results in the emails, but the results page I direct you to on BE will have all the results right there.
Thanks to everyone for subscribing and taking this ride with me for the next two weeks. If you want to chat sumo with me, and everyone else here, please jump into the comments (either on Bloody Elbow or here on Substack)!
Bonus gif of today is the fully present san’yaku.
Thought Terenufuji was gonna rip Ura's arm out the socket. Big dude, relax!
I'm a Takakeisho fan, but I was actually rooting for Midorifuji in this one. Alas/hooray, the big guy was ready for the trick!
Maybe the front runners are catching on to Atamafuji the way they did Hakuseiho last year? Another flash in the pan?
A little off subject, but might be useful to do a poll or article about where sumo fans can view our sport. My wife & I watch Sumo Highlights on DirecTV's NHK channel, but we more or less stumbled on that. There might be better ways to get the whole picture.