Congrats to New Ozeki, Onosato!
A profile, what few stats we have
Let’s check out the new ozeki riding his prize sea bream:
I’ve been a bit “out of pocket” since the tournament. You can see my main substack as to why.
But while we wait for the November tournament, let us celebrate the various wrestlers who have had significant wins or retirements.
First, the basho winner and wunderkind, Onosato!
I hadn’t done a profile of Onosato yet as he has barely been around — he entered professional sumo in May 2023, at Makushita 10 (and I’m not getting into how he was able to get in at such a high level right now.)
I don’t want to jinx his meteoric rise, but so many of us hope he will be a future Yokozuna… perhaps Kotozakura will get there first (which will be just fine). Many of use want to see Terunofuji get his well-deserved retirement before he completely destroys his health. But perhaps I should push that discussion off to the Takakeisho retirement post.
Onosato Rank and Weight Graph
First, I had to do a bit of sleuthing work to get Onosato’s weight history, given I usually don’t track wrestlers’ weights until they reach Makuuchi level.
And Onosato didn’t come up to Makuuchi until 2024.
That wouldn’t give me much to work with. So I found people who had videos of Onosato bouts in 2023 from Abema… which showed his weight. Yeah, the things I do to get my data.
So there’s no real scale for rank. I had to artificially add numbers in for the ranks. We all know Onosato has had THE FASTEST RISE to Ozeki since forever. Yeah, I didn’t add in the Ozeki rank — it will be there for the November tournament, obviously, but I didn’t want to put that in yet.
The weight was a bit wacky, but realize it’s not a huge range and not over a large amount of time.
He came in at 177 kgs (~390 pounds) in May 2023, and bumped up to 183 kgs (~403 pounds) in January 2024 and has lost some weight since that peak. His last weigh-in was for the September 2024 tournament, coming in at 182 kgs, so not that different.
Onosato is plenty big.
Keep a good grip there, Onosato.
Onosato Kimarite
Let me give a warning: There are only 120 matches in the Sumo database for Onosato. He won 90 matches, lost 30.
With so few matches, it’s difficult to analyze his kimarite well.
He is only at the beginning of his career.
For example, he has 3 fusen on his record, and because he has only 90 wins total, those 3 fusen have an overweight result among his top kimarite (yes, yes, I know fusen, when the other guy had to default on the match due to injury or illness, is not really a kimarite).
Most long-time wrestlers will not see fusen as a significant result among their “winning moves”. It was just “luck” that Onosato was up against Chiyomaru, Hoshoryu, and Kinbozan on the particular days they had to bow out.
It may be significant that Onosato’s oshidashi percentage is so high, and that of the few times that Onosato does lose, he has been particularly weak against uwatenage.
Another top losing move for Onosato, not shown above, is shitatenage. Four of his 30 losing matches he lost to that move. But it might not be so much the move as who is doing it — three of the four times, it was Hoshoryu who executed the shitatenage.
That differs from the uwatenage, which he lost to five times. That was five different wrestlers.
Sometimes it may be the move… and sometimes the wrestler.
