TOKYO —

Grand champion Asashoryu rebounded from an opening-day defeat by toppling Estonian Baruto for his first win of the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament on Monday. Asashoryu charged in low at the face off and got both hands on Baurto’s belt before dumping the top-ranked maegashira to the surface with a twisting underarm throw.

Fellow Mongolian yokozuna Hakuho also won comfortably, bulldozing out Georgian grappler Kokkai. In other key bouts, Bulgarian ozeki Kotooshu sent Kyokutenho spinning out with an underarm throw, ozeki Chiyotaikai saw off Kisenosato with a series of thrusts to the chest and neck, ozeki Kotomitsuki charged out second-ranked maegashira Wakanoho, komusubi Asasekiryu twisted ozeki Kaio around and bumped him out, and Ama made short work of third-ranked maegashira Kakuryu.

© 2008 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

4 Comments

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  Hikozaemon at 12:13 AM JST - 13th May

  Bloody J frigging sports has CUT out gekisen osumo from its frigging schedule. The only reason to watch that dumbass channel and the only reason I friggin pay for it, but ESPN is too lame show sumo - they want to show us frigging extreme yodelling basket frigging weaving instead. Oh, it's not like the sport has been interesting or popular or anything lately.

  ESPN sucks - I'm calling up and changing my frigging cable package to cut them out, and I'm going to make sure they know why.

  Un-friggin-believable.

  Peace

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  whitetrashed at 11:11 AM JST - 13th May

  Hikozaemon... ESPN here in the states doesn't shoe Sumo at all. Maybe they are biased. But damn at least we have plenty of Texas Hold'em poker tournements to watch all day.

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  Seiryu at 02:21 PM JST - 13th May

  Doesn't NHK hold all the broadcast licenses for sumo, or something like that?

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  Hikozaemon at 03:27 PM JST - 13th May

  No, Jsports has a broadcast license too, as in the past did TV Asahi (?).

  I think the thing with ESPN in Japan is that it is not like ESPN in the states, but rather just a trademark and set of broadcast licenses for shows put on by ESPN elsewhere - Gekisen Osumo was one of the few shows I think they made themselves in Japan, and plainly they decided that the ratings pulled in by the show were not worth cost of making the it, so now they only broadcast 2 shows instead of 15. I think that ShowTime (owned by Usen) also has broadcast rights on a pay per view or subscription basis on the internet.

  Unfortunately, the sad story seems to be that now only NHK is intersted in having the license to broadcast sumo. I wonder what caused this - maybe the Sumo Kyokai got a bit ahead of itself and increased the cost of the broadcast license with the increased interest over Asashoryu's return.

  Whatever the cause, reduced broadcast exposure will hurt the sport. Hopefully that will mean that I don't need to prebook tickets to make sure I can get in for future tournaments.

  Peace

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