Congrats to Kotozakura, November 2024 Grand Sumo Tournament Winner!
A well-deserved Ozeki win at 14-1!
There are plenty of other blogs analyzing Kotozakura’s performance in the tournament itself, and here is Hiro’s wrap-up in Sumo Prime Time:
I will have a few of my favorite Kotozakura memes from the r/SumoMemes crew at the end of this post.
But first! Kotozakura’s longer-term stats, which is my interest. Especially since many of us are wondering if he will be the next Yokozuna… or perhaps he and Hoshoryu will be sharing that (I plan on looking at Hoshoryu in a subsequent post so we can think about that.)
Kotozakura rank and weight stats
I started tracking Makuuchi wrestler weights in January 2022, so I can start see some interesting trajectories now, like with Kotozakura.
I am not sure what happened with that 6-kg drop in 2023.
Usually, I get weight updates only when they’re fighting in Tokyo, so that’s January, May, and September. But sometimes it does change — I do check every tournament, just in case, at the official JSA site.
So the 6-kg drop occurred sometime between May and September 2023, and he regained the weight by January 2024. Good holiday partying, I suppose.
Kotozakura seems to have maintained his weight well while being an Ozeki, so that’s good to see. A 3-kg window is not that bad.
But the 12-kg gain over two years, and then maintaining it seems to be good gains.
Kotozakura career kimarite stats
I claimed Kotozakura was a “typical” wrestler in this post:
Kotonowaka profile - what a "typical" rikishi looks like
So yes, sumo wrestlers like Ura, Tobizaru, and Midorifuji are some of my favorites. They tend to be surprising in many ways.
(Kotonowaka was his prior shikona, of course. He switched after being an Ozeki.)
That wasn’t entirely fair, for a few reasons. I didn’t totally explain the graph, and I’ll update the graph and go into it a little more deeply.
First, I had cut off the vertical axis in the prior post (whups). There is something unusual about Kotozakura’s loss percentage to yorikiri — but then you have to realize that Kotozakura’s win/loss stats aren’t typical.
He has a win percentage of 61%, just going by straight wins and losses by match: 375 wins and 239 losses.
If I restricted it to just Makuuchi matches, his record is:
241-150-14/388 (27 basho)
Even if I include the 14 absences, 241 wins out of 388 matches is a 62% win percentage. That is pretty good.
When you’re looking at these kimarite percentages, what you see are that among Kotozakura’s wins, what percentage were that kimarite. Similarly for losses.
You can see that Kotozakura is evenly matched in wins for oshidashi and yorikiri. He doesn’t need to be on the belt to get people out of the ring.
However…
…if he loses, it’s more likely to be yorikiri than oshidashi.
You can see he also has very low loss percentages to hatakikomi, oshitaoshi, and yoritaoshi….and various throws.
Kotozakura is not as tall as Terunofuji or Onosato, and not as heavy as Atamifuji… but he is difficult to get off balance or throw. He doesn’t fall for a henka (who would henka him - as opposed to trying to henka Hoshoryu). He is solid on his feet. So people have to grab his belt and move him out of the ring, if they’re going to beat him. For the most part.
Kotozakura Memes
All via the r/SumoMemes subreddit, credit (and link to post/thread) in caption.
