Japan's sumo world was rocked today by the announcement that Mongolian wrestler Asashoryu, the top-ranked yokozuna (Grand Champion) in the sport, would be retiring to take responsibility for an incident in which he got drunk and punched an employee at a drinking establishment. This was far from the only time the sumo star has been in trouble: he'd also been reprimanded for brawling with other wrestlers privately and was photographed playing soccer back home in Mongolia while he was supposed to be on medical leave for a back injury. One of the biggest problems with the wrestler, from the Japanese point of view, was that he lacked the hinkaku (dignity) that's expected in a person of that rank, yet Asashoryu refused to accept Japanese-style humility, often striking a "guts pose" after a tournament win and preferring a large Hawaiian shirt to his official sumo wrestler yukata while in public. Asashoryu was one of the strongest wrestlers the sport had ever seen, with an unprecedented 25 tournament victories in his 11-year career.
Asashoryu's name always makes me think of a Street Fighter special attack.
4 comments:
I don't watch sumo so I don't know the ins and outs of the sport, but in MMA I know that the 'characters' that stick out are pretty popular with the crowd. Is this different in sumo? What I'm trying to ask is how was Asahoryu generally received by the crowd?
50-50, he was a winner and people like that, but doing certain things that put off Japan (and especially the media) was not smart. Publically saying that all high ranking sumo wrestlers should get a big raise was not very Japanese of him. ^_^ Some of the anti-Asashoryu stuff was Japan not being 100% happy that non-Japanese are kicking their butt so much, but it's been that way since Konishiki and the era of Hawaiian wrestlers.
It's a shame... esp. because he could have taken the record. Sumo will be much less exciting w/o him.
It's kind of a shame that they can't handle one "bad boy" in their sport. That being said, it's kind of tradition for someone to quit over something big like that. When Maki Gotoh's younger brother was arrested for shoplifting or something, she suspended her own career for several months to sort of take responsibility for it.
Post a Comment