Height-Weight Scatterplot for November 2024 Grand Sumo Tournament
Just in time!
The non-Tokyo tournaments are the easiest, as I don’t have to check the weights (those don’t change because they don’t do a weigh-in away from the Kokugikan, officially… and I only count the stats they record at the JSA…. as sketchy as they are sometimes.)
Full Makuuchi November 2024 Scatterplot
As usual, we start with the full 42 Makuuchi wrestlers.
The size of the bubbles are just to attempt to distinguish (approximately) the ranks: the bigger the bubble, the higher the rank (the color goes along with that as well, 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)
Top Maegashira (M01 - M08)
Bottom Maegashira (M09 - M17)
It’s easier to look in those different groups. All of the graphs use the same axes, so you can see where the wrestlers are placed with respect to height and weight.
Sanyaku November 2024
With the loss of Takakeisho, we have one fewer wrestler in sanyaku, and we know that Terunofuji isn’t showing up for the November tournament. So it will be looking pretty thin this tournament.
But it’s interesting the “clustering” we see in sanyaku currently. We’ve got the three big guys together — Terunofuji, Onosato, and Kotozakura — and it’s interesting that people are seeing Onosato or Kotozakura as the possible next Yokozuna.
The next cluster are the guys with decent height, but are lighter: Wakamotoharu, Hoshoryu, and Kirishima. Hmm.
Then Shodai and Daieisho, who I would not want to cluster together, but they aren’t too far apart in weight-height.
Top Maegashira November 2024
When we get to the larger groups, there isn’t so much clustering.
This is what I love about pro sumo: no weight classes, and thus you get all sorts of shapes and strategies. You’ve got the big guys like Oho or Atamifuji, but you also have the small guys like Ura and Tobizaru.
Lower Maegashira November 2024
This one has a more “diagonal” look to it (other than outlier Bushozan), with a particular height-weight ratio. Kind of a certain BMI going on here - with the wrestlers in these ranks falling into certain physical limits (again, eyeing Bushozan).
I circled the two new entrants to Makuuchi, the tall, hefty, and not very flexible Ukrainian Shishi:
Also, the mini-muscleman Asakoryu: (this is old video clips, but it gives you an idea)
Asakoryu is a delight to watch.
UPDATE: Spreadsheet
(I keep forgetting to append the spreadsheet)
Sumo Kaboom on the Banzuke!
If you found my site, you probably already know about this, but just in case not:
Sumo Kaboom! - Play sumo bingo! I’ve won the 2nd place drawing in the past (and yeah, I know it’s probably several people who get the tchotchkes, but I don’t care — I got a banzuke and sumo wrestler cards! It was fun! And it’s free!)
I’ve been a long-time listener of their podcast - I’m the same age as the sumo sisters of Texas, and it does crack me up there are so many middle-aged women into sumo! Woo!
Latest episode:
They also did a hilarious episode where they did spooky sumo stories for Halloween:
Just too much.