Height-Weight Scatterplot for May 2025 Grand Sumo Tournament
Whups, Let it slide for a bit...
Yeah, I had some posts in draft (um, congrats, Onosato, for the March 2025 basho win! A bit late to post that one now) but let’s get back into it!
Okay, no more delay!
Full Makuuchi May 2025 Scatterplot
As per usual, the run-down on these graphs:
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 - M18)
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 May 2025
Like here.
No shorties in the Sanyaku.
Daiesho is the shortest, at 182 cm, which is almost 6 feet tall.
It’s interesting to see that all these guys are fairly tall, but some are slim, like Wakatakakage (at the willowy 136 kg, or 300 pounds).
Then we have Onosato, who is both the tallest and heftiest in this group, at 192 cm (6’ 3.5”) and 191 kg (421 pounds).
But when we get to other rest of Makuuchi, we’ll see much shorter guys, and some lighter ones. And some of them beat these taller and heavier ones.
Upper Maegashira May 2025
It always surprises me to remember that Kinbozan is the tallest in Makuuchi. He just never seems so when you watch him on the dohyo.
Tobizaru is no longer the shortest (some of us stare at Midorifuji and say… Tobi was not the shortest before, but I will drop this for now.)
But it is interesting there is a huge disparity if height and weight in pro-sumo at the highest level.
Lower Maegashira May 2025
And now, we’ve got some new entrants.
Let me annotate this particular graph:
I’ve circled the two new guys to Makuuchi — Kayo, the definitely shortest guy, at 171 cm (5’7”) and Tochitaikai who is one of the tallest, at 193 cm (6’4”).
Kayo is from Okinawa, and looks like a big ole butterball.
Tochitaikai is not quite a butterball.
Weight change histogram, March to May 2025
I’ve been tracking the weight changes, month-to-month.
It’s interesting that it’s mostly weight gain between March and May.
Here are the top gainers:
Dear Lord, Onosato, you’re already a monster — do you really need to gain more weight?
And the top losers:
While weight loss can be a bad sign in sumo, for some of the guys, they can be carrying too much weight, and weight loss can help performance, I think.
We’ll see!
HAKKEYOI!
