STUMP » Articles » Saturday Sumo: Only One Day More.... » 25 March 2023, 17:12

Where Stu & MP spout off about everything.

Saturday Sumo: Only One Day More....  

by

25 March 2023, 17:12

As I predicted several days ago:

And yesterday:

Non-Sumo Hideousness

I thought I’d share:

(Check that 2nd tweet to find a thread where I explain to an Australian what Peeps are)

Busted Sumo Dreams

First, Terunofuji is still not fully healed from his knee surgery, so we were Yokozuna-less.

Then, Takakeisho, the sole ozeki, withdrew from the tournament due to injury as his own Yokozuna run dreams faded away.

Courtesy of GoblinBags at /r/SumoMemes:

(Explanation: The sumo wrestler pictured is the lone ozeki Takakeisho, who, if he had actually dominated the March tournament could have gotten a promotion to Yokozuna, the highest rank one can get in sumo. The logo pictured is a stylized Yokozuna belt.)

Then the giant-killer Midorifuji was banging them out… until he ran into the Waka bros:

sigh [and it got worse after that]

The Graph After Day 13

I put together the graph of the top 7 rikishi, so I could update it right after the Saturday (Day 14) bouts…

On Day 14, these were the match-ups for these 7 wrestlers:

  • Leader Daieisho (11 wins -2 losses) was matched with 2nd-runner Midorifuji (10-3)
  • Kiribayama (10-3) was matched against Wakatakakage (7-6)
  • Wakamotoharu (10-3) was matched against Hoshoryu (9-4)
  • Kotonowaka (9-4) was matched against Endo (8-5)
  • Kinbozan (9-4) was matched against Abi (8-5)

Day 14 Results and Day 15 Bouts Scheduled

And this is the result:

  • Daieisho won against Midorifuji, so he leads the pack at 12 wins and 2 losses
  • Watatakakage was kyujo, or absent. Kiribayama won his match by default, so his record is officially 11-3. Yeah, I know, but that’s how it works.
  • Hoshoryu beat Wakamotoharu – so they’re both at 10-4
  • Endo won against Kotonowaka – they’re both 9-5
  • Kinbozan won against Abi – so Kinbozan is 10-4

There were other bouts, too. So the ranking going into Day 15 looks like:

1. Daeiesho 12-2
2. Kiribayama 11-3
3. Hoshoryu 10-4; Wakamotoharu 10-4; Midorifuji 10-4; Kinbozan 10-4

Then a bunch of other guys. Updating the graph above.

And if you want to see the graph with ALL the wrestlers…

(note: the vertical and horizontal scales are different, to fit in all the wrestlers, especially Hokuseiho, who is a giant at over 2 meters tall.)

Yeah, I’m not cleaning that one up right now.

The matches for Day 15 are up, and unsurprisingly, Daieisho is up against Kiribayama. If Kiribayama wins, then it goes to a play-off between the two of them.

If Daieisho wins, then he’s the tournament winner. That’s pretty clear-cut.

For the Nerds: How They Do The Sumo Schedule

Stu found this, and he backed out after 10 minutes.

He knew it would be perfect for me…. (and he just couldn’t take it anymore.)

Yes, I know I have done a lot of odd things in my life. But one of those things I did was figure out golf fours for somebody (in exchange for some swag), and I set up a whole season schedule for my grandma’s bridge club.

In both cases, the people wanted to make sure that there was enough mixture of competitors…. but because this wasn’t a “real” competition, but a social situation where the hosts wanted people to have fun, I was given a list of “pairs” where I was, under no circumstances, to allow said pairs show up in the same four.

(Basically, these were people who hated each others’ guts and would ruin the activity… the similar thing in the sumo world is that certain wrestlers cannot be scheduled to wrestle against each other because they’re from the same stable or they’re related to each other. It’s not that they hate each other — quite the reverse.)

Anyway, it was a very difficult problem. I loved the challenge.

Spreadsheet at the bottom of the substack version of this post


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