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Sumo's biggest star retires due to drunken brawl

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Mr7134, Feb 4, 2010.

  1. Mr7134

    Mr7134 Member

    Sumo's biggest star, Asashoryu, has retired due to a drunken brawl.

    A brief summation of the situation taken from Dave Meltzer's daily update...

    http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/12199/

    More detail here...

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/star-of-sumo-quits-in-tears-after-brawl-in-tokyo-club-1889952.html
     
  2. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    Asashoryu... I giggled...
     
  3. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    The word "honor" is quite synonymous with the Japanese culture.

    Harsh but at least there's no doubting accountability ...
     
  4. Chef2

    Chef2 Well-Known Member

    He could always go to the WWE.

    I'm sure Vince would be thrilled to have Assho The Giant.
     
  5. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    How much does a sumo wrestler have to drink to get drunk?
     
  6. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    A distillery.
     
  7. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    Sumo wrestling is basically an offensive line drill. Why or how the NFL hasn't been able to raid Japan for talent is beyond my knowledge: The top level sumo wrestlers in Japan only make about $370,000. My guess is because of prestige.
     
  8. Mr7134

    Mr7134 Member

    If he is actually done with Sumo then I wouldn’t be surprised to see him to pop up on New Year's Eve doing either an MMA bout or a kickboxing bout on one of the network specials.
     
  9. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Can't recall the last time I saw a sumo wrestler throw a trap block during a match.
     
  10. Just_a_fan

    Just_a_fan Member

    I think it has to do with stamina. Sumo wrestlers are conditioned to push people around for minutes at a time. 3 hours or more for a football game would probably kill them.
     
  11. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    Dr. Z wrote a few years ago that he asked (a pre-insanity and death) Al Davis whether he had ever considered the idea:

    "Erik of Kyoto, Japan, is greatly impressed with the sumo performers. He wonders why no one's ever given these gigantic athletes, who are remarkably light on their feet, a shot in the NFL? One year I was in Hawaii with my son, Mike, and we were watching the sumo bouts on TV. It was great fun ... we were betting on every one ... and then along came Konishiwa, at 566 pounds. He got down in a defensive lineman's four-point stance, came out of it with a two-hand shiver in perfect form, and simply blasted his guy out of the ring. Holy hell! When I got back to the mainland I called Al Davis. Get a couple of these guys, alternate them at nose tackle and who's gonna run on you? You ever consider this?

    "At one time we looked into it," he said. "Two things wrong with the idea. One, you couldn't pay them enough. They make big money there and don't get the hell beat out of them. No. 2, no stamina. Their bouts last a few seconds. Make 'em go much longer than that and they'd give out."

    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/dr_z/news/2003/06/13/drz_mailbag/
     
  12. Stoney

    Stoney Well-Known Member

    What Al said was correct regarding Konishiki (correct name of guy referenced above) and most sumo greats of the past. But it does NOT apply to the guy who is the subject of this thread.

    Asashoryu is physically the most impressive thing Sumo's ever seen. Unbelievable natural strength, quickness, balance, aggressiveness, the whole package--and at 330 lbs (here's a <a href="
    ">sampling</a> of what a typical Asa bout looks like). He has utterly dominated the sport over the last decade, and I've little doubt he'd be a star NFL defensive lineman if he'd grown up in the U.S.

    Unfortunately, his combative and expressive personality (and Mongolian ethnicity) has long rubbed the sport's heirarchy and Japanese establishment the wrong way, and he's had some prior incidents that have fanned those flames.

    Still, even with Japan's more stringent honor code, I can't believe they'd push him out for this. The sport is in serious trouble and rapidly declining in popularity as it is. Asashoryo is essentially its Tiger Woods. They lose him, they lose quite many of the few folks still watching, seems damn near suicidal to drive out your sport's biggest star at a time like this. If he is really gone, I'd like to see him try something else (mma, wrestling, football, whatever), seems like such a waste to hang up those physical skills over something as silly as a drunken punch at a bar.

    P.S. Yeah, I kinda follow Sumo a bit. A bug I picked up while living there for a couple years long ago.
     
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