|
Thanks for running the goonzuke, Kenning. Hopefully I can stay out of Juryo.
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 18:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:04 |
|
|
Zedsdeadbaby posted:The YDC are not happy with Hakuho, in particular with his Shodai bout and his forearm shiver against Terunofuji yeah they seem to strongly dislike him
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 18:10
|
|
|
Zedsdeadbaby posted:The YDC are not happy with Hakuho, in particular with his Shodai bout and his forearm shiver against Terunofuji  I'll admit I found the Teruno forearm jarring in how positively violent it was and it still makes me uncomfortable to see, but the Shodai match is all on Shodai - if a guy starts that far back that he's at the end of the ring and you have zero way to capitalise AND made to look like an absolute fool thats on you. Lid fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jul 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 18:21
|
|
|
Zedsdeadbaby posted:The YDC are not happy with Hakuho, in particular with his Shodai bout and his forearm shiver against Terunofuji article posted:“I would like to praise myself,” the yokozuna said.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 18:45
|
|
|
I love Hakuho
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 19:03
|
|
|
Lid posted:I'll admit I found the Teruno forearm jarring in how positively violent it was.. It didn't bother me at the time as I thought that was going to be Hakuho's last career match. Fighting your last ever match, as the GOAT, to complete a zensho against a top-shelf competitor who himself is getting promoted to Yokozuna? That's license for whatever dropkick henka boston-crab nonsense you feel like. But absent some of that context, I feel like baseball-batting your opponent is not sustainable sumo, and they may have to clamp down on striking. I like MMA just fine - but there's reasons you can't schedule someone for an MMA fight 15 days in a row (or expect them to have 400 career matches).
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 19:20
|
|
|
Me kinda hovering around M11 on the back of constantly picking a mediocre team is acceptable. This, though, obviously is blamed on Wakatakakage
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 19:22
|
|
|
If only it were possible to make new rules. But it's not, a system of old men grumbling will have to suffice
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 19:27
|
|
|
Does anybody know if there will be any televised or streamed ceremony for Terunofuji's promotion? That'd be cool to watch.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 19:28
|
|
|
Lid posted:I'll admit I found the Teruno forearm jarring in how positively violent it was and it still makes me uncomfortable to see, but the Shodai match is all on Shodai - if a guy starts that far back that he's at the end of the ring and you have zero way to capitalise AND made to look like an absolute fool thats on you. I get why some people found the Terunofuji match unbecoming of a yokozuna but I'm honestly puzzled at the negative reaction to the Shodai match. Prior to that match I'd never once heard anyone claim that starting all the way back at the tawara was bad conduct. Certainly not after the Tobizaru match—I didn't see anyone saying Tobi tried to pull something shady or underhanded on Hakuho, just that he tried something zany and it didn't work. To me it seems like a legit strategy with its own set of tradeoffs.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 19:56
|
|
|
Tiny Bug Child posted:I get why some people found the Terunofuji match unbecoming of a yokozuna but I'm honestly puzzled at the negative reaction to the Shodai match. Prior to that match I'd never once heard anyone claim that starting all the way back at the tawara was bad conduct. Certainly not after the Tobizaru match—I didn't see anyone saying Tobi tried to pull something shady or underhanded on Hakuho, just that he tried something zany and it didn't work. To me it seems like a legit strategy with its own set of tradeoffs. The gist is that a yokozuna should be above tricky tactics like that
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 20:14
|
|
|
I feel like Hakuho has a vendetta against the YDC after they recommended that the JSA end honorary elder stock.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 20:28
|
|
|
jmzero posted:I like MMA just fine - but there's reasons you can't schedule someone for an MMA fight 15 days in a row (or expect them to have 400 career matches). mma and boxing folks have brain problems due to being hit a lot, but even more so than them, nfl players. a standard tachiai where both heads collide are at least as bad for you as what hakuho did. the amount of times they practice full strength and full speed tachiais during training is far more concerning for me than literally anything that can happen during one of the scheduled bout starts.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 20:29
|
|
|
The YDC's relationship with Hakuho is the example par excellence of the fundamental tension in sumo between sport and cultural heritage. The fact that modern sumo is tied up with the Imperial family points clearly to the fact that, like the Imperial family, sumo has been a tool used to create and understand Japanese nationhood, especially in the modern period. This is a weird thing for any sporting association to be, because athletes are rarely the sort of literary and philosophical types who discourse on the meaning of national identity, but the issue really started to heat up in the 90s when non-Japanese nationals began to ascend to the heights of sumo. What could Akebono possibly care about how the Way of Sumo expresses and reinforces certain cultural values that are important to the way Japan conceives of itself? He was an athlete, and a remarkable one, and that was mostly it. Hakuho is an athlete. More than anything, he wants to win. He's also in love with sumo, as has been pointed out upthread, and I think he genuinely believes in the more abstract and loftier ideals of what it means to be yokozuna. It's why he took Tochinoshin belt-to-belt during the latter's ozeki run, and why he engaged Takakeisho in an oshi fight on his run. But even though he gets that part, he's an utterly dominant athlete who wants to win, and he'll do anything within the rules to do so. The Yokozuna Deliberation Council is all lay people. None of them have ever been sumotori, as far as I'm aware, which I think is why they are so hard on Hakuho. They are precisely the sort of literary and philosophical types whose concern is for the fidelity of the cultural project that sumo is supporting, much more so than the career of any given athlete, or even the viability of sumo as an athletic spectacle. The Japan Sumo Association is occasionally annoyed with Hakuho, but those guys are all former wrestlers who at least understand that he's a fighter who needs to fight. Hakuho's tachi-ai against Shodai was, as several people here and elsewhere have pointed out, an incredible display of athletic versatility and long-term strategy. He did something no one does, had total confidence that he could pull it off, and also psyched out Shodai so bad that he probably should have just gotten a fusensho win against him. He also sent a message to Terunofuji that he was willing to do anything to win, and there's no way it didn't rattle the ozeki. It was brilliant, almost beautiful. But it didn't Feel Right to the kind of people who need sumo to be something other than a contest between two men to either throw each other or push each other. Which is why they whine about it. I'm loving fascinated with what Hakuho will be like as an elder. Once his concern is no longer his own record and desire to win I have no idea what sort of things he'll want to accomplish in the JSA. I don't think he'll be quite the flamboyant reformist that Takanohana was, but somehow I don't see him as a middle of the line conservative either. I also wonder what the YDC will find to complain about once their ultimate bug bear is finally out of the ring. Kenning fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jul 20, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 20:40
|
|
|
As was mentioned before if it's similar to baseball hall of fame voters they will be mad at Hakuho until they die just like Pete Rose. Granted very different circumstances but it shows how long that type can hold a grudge.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 21:21
|
|
|
I'm trying to put myself in Hakuho's position when he hears that he has been yokozuna'ing wrong and my mind immediately starts fantasising about yorikiri'ing old men out of skyscrapers for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 21:29
|
|
|
Kenning posted:I also wonder what the YDC will find to complain about once their ultimate bug bear is finally out of the ring. An ironic switch to saying that guys like Shodai or Terunofuji aren't showing the level expected of them for not being able to win against legal harite.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 21:31
|
|
|
Kenning posted:I'm loving fascinated with what Hakuho will be like as an elder. Once his concern is no longer his own record and desire to win I have no idea what sort of things he'll want to accomplish in the JSA. I don't think he'll be quite the flamboyant reformist that Takanohana was, but somehow I don't see him as a middle of the line conservative either. I really want to see what happens if the triumvirate of Hak/Kise/Kak survive their early years in the JSA and work their way up. Hak’s heavy into the development of sumo as a sport via the Hakuho Cup thing he runs and Kise’s doing his thing trying to modernize training standards. Not sure about Kak, but all 3 of them have had to deal with their own bullshit from the JSA enough that they should know what they’d want to change. And the upper ranks of leadership seems to be weighted towards in-ring rank (9 of the 12 rikishi Chairmen have been Yokozuna with 2 Ozeki and 1 Maegashira) so chances are one of them will take the reigns at some point. And with Takanohana flaming out and a bunch of the early foreign Yoks staying out/being forced out of the JSA, the next youngest Yok is 15 years older than the new guys so they could get their sooner rather than later. By the time the current director reaches retirement age in 7 years, the only other Yokozuna will be 58 year old Musashimaru, the second non-Japanese Yokozuna. If chairman is still a Yokozuna job, then the only other choice would be 42 year-old Kise (assuming if they skip the American, the Mongolians are probably also out). Takanohana probably would have had the chairmanship reserved for him if he had the patience to wait it out. anakha posted:FYI, this is the guy with a brother in MMA and who knocked Enho loopy with open-palm uppercuts last basho. Note the reason his brother is in MMA is because he got banned from sumo for beating on lower rankers in the stable and rumor was that he took the fall for both of them.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
pseudodragon posted:I really want to see what happens if the triumvirate of Hak/Kise/Kak survive their early years in the JSA ... they could get their [chance to run things] sooner rather than later. This is really interesting, I hope something like this happens. Kise and Kakuryu both seem like they'd be really beneficial to the sport if they were in leadership roles.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 22:27
|
|
|
Marching Powder posted:I'm trying to put myself in Hakuho's position when he hears that he has been yokozuna'ing wrong and my mind immediately starts fantasising about yorikiri'ing old men out of skyscrapers for some reason. It's the kind of thing that should get a 'if you believe I am doing this wrong, then perhaps you can recommend someone up to your standards to face me' polite question. Especially after they promoted Terunofuji (who was absolutely deserving) right after he got humbled by the GOAT.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 23:08
|
|
|
Marching Powder posted:I'm trying to put myself in Hakuho's position when he hears that he has been yokozuna'ing wrong and my mind immediately starts fantasising about yorikiri'ing old men out of skyscrapers for some reason. given the NBA finals today my mind is going to people going Giannis has No Bag at this and how he isn't a best of all time player because he's Basketballing Wrong.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 23:14
|
|
|
Takes a truly unique organisation to make your first order of business following a historic win by your most bankable star to publicly dress him down to the press with the sincere intention to minimise his achievement.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 23:20
|
|
|
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Supposedly About Sports > Punchsport Pagoda > Sumo wrestling: “I would like to praise myself,” the yokozuna said.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 23:40
|
|
|
YDC gonna YDC, they're just meant to be an official voice of the old generation, they don't actually decide jack poo poo. My understanding is that even specifically for Yokozuna promotions, the YDC simply provides a "recommendation" and the NSK has the actual power to promote, and if they really wanted to they could do so without a recommendation. The YDC (and their CEO friends that they speak for) are also the ones providing a non-trivial chunk of the money towards Sumo, so it makes sense that they don't care about who's a profitable star or whatever, they're paying to have their voice heard.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 23:44
|
|
|
The official confirmation that they've accepted the recommendation should be coming in the next few hours.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2021 23:52
|
|
|
Lolling at 'I pay good money to give endless poo poo to our biggest star publicly'
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 00:22
|
|
|
They're streaming Terunofuji's promotion ceremony right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjp7rX-A6Qg e: 
Tiny Bug Child fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Jul 21, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 01:31
|
|
|
I’d somehow never actually watched a promotion ceremony before, just seen photos. That was.. shorter than I expected.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 01:47
|
|
|
They may be cutting it short due to covid.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 03:31
|
|
|
Takuan posted:They may be cutting it short due to covid.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 04:01
|
|
|
Hirayuki posted:Why start now? The authorities are infamously bungling pretty much their entire covid response over there. They're even making us in the UK look good. The olympics is struggling so far, lot of people getting pinged and being told to isolate in the athletes' village for instance.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 04:57
|
|
|
Terunofuji wincing in pain as he knelt down to bow. I can’t imagine the type of resolve it took to reach the highest rank in the sport in that condition.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 05:30
|
|
|
Lid posted:given the NBA finals today my mind is going to people going Giannis has No Bag at this and how he isn't a best of all time player because he's Basketballing Wrong. Well, they'll look pretty aggressively stupid now frfr
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 06:04
|
|
|
Charles Gnarwin posted:Terunofuji wincing in pain as he knelt down to bow. I can’t imagine the type of resolve it took to reach the highest rank in the sport in that condition. He had issues during his ozeki promotion as well. It's crazy that his knees are that hosed up yet he is one of the strongest wrestlers active now.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 13:21
|
|
|
I think its pretty much ubiquitous across all sports that high level athletes perform incredibly despite the myriad of injuries they all seem to be carrying. Something that tends to be more exaggerated in contact sports but is true of all major athletic pursuits.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 14:58
|
|
|
My knees are lovely and I hate moving with a passion and i’m 140lbs not 400 AND I don’t push around other 400lb men for a living so I can’t even begin to imagine how lovely just moving around is for that poor man.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 16:40
|
|
|
Kenning posted:He also sent a message to Terunofuji that he was willing to do anything to win, and there's no way it didn't rattle the ozeki. I know it's clipping a short bit of your very interesting post but do you really think it rattled Terunofuji? I always feel that he's a bit more self confident than that and probably thought 'that'll get a reaction' that rattled him. The big problem is we don't get to see a lot of who the wrestlers really are, certainly not through post bout interviews so you could be absolutely on the money. Kenning posted:I'm loving fascinated with what Hakuho will be like as an elder. Once his concern is no longer his own record and desire to win I have no idea what sort of things he'll want to accomplish in the JSA. I don't think he'll be quite the flamboyant reformist that Takanohana was, but somehow I don't see him as a middle of the line conservative either. I also wonder what the YDC will find to complain about once their ultimate bug bear is finally out of the ring. I'm interested to see how he and Kisenosato will do. I can't wait to see how the next Japanese born yokozuna will be hailed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 17:28
|
|
|
Might be waiting a while for that.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 18:48
|
|
|
bessantj posted:I can't wait to see how the next Japanese born yokozuna will be hailed. I don't think Shodai is looking to change his shikona anytime soon.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 18:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:04 |
|
|
bessantj posted:I know it's clipping a short bit of your very interesting post but do you really think it rattled Terunofuji? I always feel that he's a bit more self confident than that and probably thought 'that'll get a reaction' that rattled him. The big problem is we don't get to see a lot of who the wrestlers really are, certainly not through post bout interviews so you could be absolutely on the money. He's definitely confident, I'm not disputing that. I also suspect he was studying tape and thinking about what Hakuho was likely to use against him. If you're psyching yourself up for a whole tournament to face Hakuho and on day 14 he does something he's never done before I feel like it would at least plant some doubt. The thing is, whether or not his weird tachi-ai rattled Terunofuji, Hakuho created the possibility that it could do so, which is in line with what my basic argument is about him being a perfect athlete. He never stops trying to create an advantage. I think that's part of what annoys the YDC, who just want him to be a stoic cliff standing against the sea as the waves crash into him. Maybe some former yokozuna were like that, but probably not. It's like how during the Song Dynasty the Chan Buddhists told all these stories about Tang-era monks who were intuitive and iconoclastic and who embodied the living dharma. The purpose of those stories wasn't to relate an actual historical fact about actual Buddhist practice. It was a way of dealing with the fact that Song-era monasteries were extremely bureaucratic and Chan Buddhism was basically being used as almost an arm of the state, which was clearly in conflict with the Buddhist scriptures. Complaining about the modern state of Buddhism and hailing a more pure past allowed them to not feel like hypocrites. Complaining about Hakuho violating all of this ancient and noble tradition is a way to allow the (old, conservative) members of the YDC (and probably a few members and ex-members of the JSA) to sublimate their anxieties about larger changes happening in both sumo as a whole and Japan in itself. Who is the dai-yokozuna they can hold up as being the alternative to Hakuho? Not Asahoryu or Akebono, they were both foreigners and both had issues with hinkaku as well. Takanohana is clearly too much of a mercurial drama queen. Besides, it's best if heroes and ideals are dead. It's probably Chiyonofuji or Taiho or both. I hope I'm not being too glib or making too much of a stretch here, but Taiho entered sumo right at the beginning of Japan's postwar boom, and Chiyonofuji retired right around the time the bubble burst. Of course they, in their capacity as embodiments of the ideals of sumo, which is itself an embodiment of idealized Japanese values and cultural identity, are hailed as the true greats of the sport. Hakuho is a proxy in a much larger series of conflicts and anxieties than just whether or not it's okay for yokozuna to be clever and powerful and use tricks, or if they should only do respectable yotsu-zumo like our grandfathers used to do.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2021 19:02
|
|