The January sumo tournament in Japan ends this weekend! HYPE! US Eastern time: Friday night/Saturday morning is day 14 and Saturday night / Sunday morning tomorrow is the final day 15! EPIC! If you wanna watch, better watch soon bc most of the online videos get taken down sometime in the next week or two!
Live / Replay:
- try searching on twitch, there are usually at least 3 different streamers providing live video feeds with English commentary, and it’s fun to have a community to chat with in real time. The top Makuuchi matches start around 3am US Eastern Time though. At least one of the streamers does replays all day, usually of the entire day (including lower ranks).
Video Clips:
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youtuber DonDon makes a daily video of the “best 10” matches listed in English with replays including on-screen English analysis; those are listed here: https://www.youtube.com/@dondonsumo2/videos Besides the “best 10” of the top Makuuchi tier, DonDon also makes a “best 5” of the second Juryo tier.
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NHK makes a daily video that has all the top-tier Makuuchi bouts with English spoken commentary. This video is replayed on their web site several times during the following day (kind of like an old-fashioned TV station); you can see the schedule here: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/ look for “Grand Sumo highlights.” After a day of scheduled replays, the video is put up for “on demand” access here: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/sumo/ and (possibly with additional delay) here: https://www.youtube.com/@NHKWORLDJAPAN/videos
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NHK immediately posts individual videos of each bout listed in Japanese with Japanese commentary.
click here for instructions to see the NHK Japanese videos
They are re-doing their Japanese website. I THINK that to see the latest videos on the NHK site in Japanese, you look here: https://www.nhk.jp/g/ts/Z8WRRJ9K96/blog/bl/pm1VNbJpWQ/bp/pExrRxao2y/ and click on the topmost link that says “NHK ONE”, it should look like this:
Click “I understand” to acknowledge that you’re not in Japan (lel) and then scroll down til you see this button:
it might look like this:
click on that and you should see all the videos?!
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JSA immediately posts individual videos of each of the highest-ranked 10+ matches listed in Japanese with no commentary, here: https://www.youtube.com/@sumo-video/videos
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For the listings in Japanese, try automated translations if there’s a lot of text. Alternately, look for something like: 9月14日 which in this case refers to the 9th month and the 14th day (September 14th). Automated translation doesn’t work that well on sumotori names, but this is a great opportunity to learn them by sight! (The JSA web site has pictures of them all.)
Additional fan youtube channels (I haven’t checked them out too thoroughly)
- https://www.youtube.com/@sumowithherbert
- https://www.youtube.com/@SumoFiles
- https://www.youtube.com/@Sumotop/videos
- https://www.youtube.com/@Wakanoho-8/videos
- https://www.youtube.com/@DarkCircleSumo/streams
Text Info in English:
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all results and standings and next-day schedule by sumodb
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more results and stats from sumostats, another fan site
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results and more info from the JSA
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daily writeups by The Mainichi (Mainichi Shimbun newspaper)
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occasional articles by The Japan News (Yomiuru Shimbun newspaper)
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for commentary, see the tachiai fan site
Intro to Sumo
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more English-language intro videos at NHK’s Sumopedia
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the wikipedia article has a lot of great information including on sumo terms.
Looks like Aonishiki’s up against Onosato next… it had to happen bc they haven’t fought yet and they’re 2 of the top people in the banzuke rankings.
It’s a tough match for Aonishiki not only bc Onosato is one of the best out there, but also bc Onosato suffered a left shoulder injury recently and still seems to be recovering ( cite , cite ). In his Day 8 bout against Hakunofuji, Onosato seemed to be especially in pain bc Hakunofuji (intentionally or not) was pressing against his left shoulder.
Now if this was MMA or something, you’d target Onosato’s left shoulder, right? But this isn’t MMA. The last couple days, Onosato’s opponents have been studiously ignoring Onosato’s left. I’m guessing Aonishiki’s going to do the same. But the danger is that Onosato gets hurt, or it looks like Aonishiki is trying to hurt him, or something like that.
It’s a real quandry. Really, if Onosato is injured, he shouldn’t be risking his long-term ability by still being in the tourney.
Re: Onosato, it seems the JSA are more into the narrative of triumph thru adversity than they are about showing wrestlers fight at full strength. And that gets a “boo!” from me.
Re: Hoshi-chan, maybe Aonishiki was holding back when Hosh won 7-3 in the pre-tournament training.
Re: Hoshi-chan, maybe Aonishiki was holding back when Hosh won 7-3 in the pre-tournament training.
The way I heard it, that was ten bouts in a row. Aonishiki won the first 3, then Hoshoryu won the last 7. My guess is that Aonshiki has less stamina but idk. Lucky for him he only needs to go 100% once, maybe twice per day.
I don’t think Kotezakura was ignoring the left side, it looked like he wanted to play his style adapted to Onosato. Also because despite his injury he will easily outclass you if you play your b-game. So in that sense Aonishki will have a hard time. I hope he wins, but I don’t expect it.