Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Another One Bites the Dust

Or should I say.... The dohyo?

I assume many of you readers know that I am a huge sumo fanatic. I've been watching it for the past four years after discovering it on NHK World.. There was some news breaking today that Former Ozeki Baruto is retiring after a nine year pro career as a sumo wrestler. I'm very bummed out because he has been a major player the whole time I've been watching the sport. He's retiring because of a nagging knee injury that wouldn't go away and probably will stay with him for life, to some degree.

He is in an awkward position because if he were to have pulled out of the current tournament, he would have been demoted off of the upper divisions and with that goes regular pay and benefits. Homasho was able to bounce back after a two tournament recovery period, but there is no guarantee how many tournaments Baruto would be sitting out. In the pro wrestling world, Tyson Kidd just came back from a similar injury that took 6+ months to recover from, and then a solid amount of training on top of that. Unfortunately for us fans, I think Baruto made the right choice for the sake of having a life after sumo.

I think I might start working on my new sumo schedule today. But I guess I need to start watching and tracking again or the schedule won't work. I wonder if there is fantasy sumo, like fantasy football, and if so, how many people always pick Hakuho.

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