Height-Weight Scatterplot for July 2025 Grand Sumo Tournament
TWO YOKOZUNA!!!
If you haven’t yet seen the NHK World Grand Sumo Preview, check it out: July Tournament Grand Sumo Preview — it’s video on demand, and I watched it on Roku. It has NHK sumo English commentators Hiro Morita, Murray Johnson, and John Gunning commenting on the new Yokozuna, Onosato, the likely rivalry between the two top dogs, and the rest of the banzuke (there’s a surprise in the show!) At 28 minutes, the show clips along at a fast pace.
Let’s jump into the scatterplot!
Full Makuuchi July 2025 Height-Weight Scatterplot
The full plot is always really busy, so I’ll be splitting it up into three more manageable parts below.
The size of the bubbles is an attempt to distinguish the ranks (approximately): the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank.
(The color goes along with bubble size, but the colors are similar, being from the Hokusai3 colorway of MetBrewer).
I have three subsets of the above scatterplot, as 42 dots, many of which overlap, is a lot to look at:
Sanyaku (Yokozuna, Ozeki, Sekiwake, Komusubi)
Upper Maegashira (M01 - M08)
Lower Maegashira (M09 - M17)
It’s easier to look at those different groups.
All of the graphs use the same limits on both horizontal and vertical axes, so you can see where the wrestlers are placed with respect to height and weight.
Because I will be using the same axes on all three groupings, there will be a bunch of white space in some of these…
Sanyaku July 2025
First, huzzah for having two Yokozuna, but also we have two Yokozuna of quite different sizes. I like that. Again, the size of the bubbles only refers to the rank.
While the heights and weights for the entire Makuuchi fill the graph, that’s not true of the Sanyaku — there is a much smaller range of heights and weights. No short kings here.
The shortest guy in the sanyaku is Daiesho at just under 6 feet tall… and, alas, as Daiesho is kyujo for the July tournament, I think he’s falling out of the sanyaku for September.
But back to Onosato and Hoshoryu - the 4 cm difference in height may not mean much between the two Yokozuna… but the 40 kgs in weight difference may make a big difference.
Though, so far, Onosato has really only one win against Hoshoryu in 7 head-to-head matches:
The fusen one year ago was when Hoshoryu was absent. Hoshoryu had been injured in a prior day’s match against fellow Ozeki Kotozakura (which Hoshoryu had won).
Onosato’s pushing/thrusting style against Hoshoryu’s throws… oh yeah, looking forward to this.
And yes, Takayasu was lucky to stay in the sanyaku after a losing record in May. Some guys get lucky.
Upper Maegashira July 2025
For upper Maegashira, we’ve got the entire range of heights, with some interesting clusterings in body types.
One can look at the wrestlers between 130-140 kgs, but ranging from the shortest, Tobizaru (at 173 cm), up to Aonishiki and Sadanoumi (182 cm) — these guys are all “smaller” in terms of heft, but they all have different styles.
The reason I’ve been doing these height-weight scatterplots is to try to analyze if there are certain kimarite that are more successful for certain body types — obviously the Mighty Mite Midorifuji has figured out one that worked for him.
Speaking of…
Lower Maegashira July 2025
The lower Maegashira tends to have the most diverse of height & weight, and we can definitely see that in the roly-poly Kayo and the tall and lanky Shishi. These two are close in weight, but very far apart in height.
I enjoy watching the highly mismatched matches, just from an applied physics point-of-view.
Putting the KABOOM in SUMO!
Before I let you go, gotta plug my favorite sumo podcast, SUMO KABOOM:
I also listen to Grand Sumo Breakdown and Sumo Mainichi.
