Happy Retirement, Ichinojo!
A profile on the man-mountain
As with other retirees, let’s take a look at Ichinojo’s kimarite profile, as well as other aspects….
Yeah, I always called him Snorlax, too.
Ichinojo kimarite profile
Ichinojo was a yorikiri guy — recall that the main split is either yorikiri or oshidashi (usually).
Yorikiri is more hands-on (hands on the belt to get the guy out of the ring) - oshidashi is shoving the guy out. So yorikiri is up close and personal.
Some other differences: hatakikomi (slap down) and uwatenage (over arm throw) are also higher than usual.
Missing the Mountain
I have been doing the height/weight scatterplots basho by basho, but perhaps I should do it more over eras, to at least try to capture the “big guys”.
Because Ichinojo was one of the biggest guys there was.
The last basho in which he was in Makuuchi, that was November 2022, and Ichinojo was not the tallest but he was the heaviest by quite a lot.
This is one of the reasons I do not solely rely on the sumo database for weight (and height) information.
The page for Ichinojo has as its last measurement as 198 kg (436.5 pounds) in weight — but my own records, using the JSA measurements, has Ichinojo’s weight at the November 2022 basho: 212 kg (467.4 pounds).
Perhaps at that weight, 30 pounds doesn’t make a huge amount of difference… or maybe it does.
Ultimately though, that weight doesn’t make the difference for winning.
Comments on the extra weight and perhaps extra mortality
This is in passing. I am not digging into the various gossip, rumors (many actually corroborated), etc. re: Ichinojo’s abuse & alcohol use, which led to his exit from sumo. The extra weight on his frame cannot have helped.
He was way beyond the usual, as you can see from the above scatterplot.
In a separate “blast from the past”, someone brought to my attention apparent extra mortality among pro-wrestlers in the U.S.:
If you want to go down that particular rabbit hole, that’s from a decade ago and archived (and I may dig into it in my other substack):
2014: Comparing the WWF’s Death Rate to the NFL’s And Other Pro Leagues’
There has been a question about increased mortality among sumo wrestlers, and not just due to the increased danger in the matches themselves.
As a life actuary, I do hope to dig into this more as I can aggregate data. Sumo has been a particularly difficult sport, and it does not necessarily have to put its top athletes into an early grave.
Best wishes for Ichinojo
From his retirement ceremony…. the before:
During: (yay! Kirishima!)
And after:
Okay, maybe not the greatest hairdo, but he has time to work on it.
Happy to see him smiling. I hope he can get some healing in retirement.
