July 2024 Tournament Weight-Height Makuuchi Scatterplot
One week until sumo! Woo!
There are no real newbies for the July 2024 tournament in Nagoya, and as the tournament is not in Tokyo, there are no new weight or height measurements.
The data come from the JSA via their official banzuke and rikishi profiles.
Spreadsheet for download at the end of the post.
Full Makuuchi Scatterplot for July 2024
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).
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)
Sometimes the data labels do get messed up, no matter how much I try to get this fixed. I make these graphs in Excel and have to manually adjust the graphs each time. I originally built this on July 2, but what with holidays and other work, I wasn’t able to post until now.
All four of these graphs have the same limits for their axes so you can visually compare them.
Sanyaku July 2024
For our top-ranked rikishi, there is a bias towards taller wrestlers, but we do have the shorter and even lighter guys here. I like that there is a variety of sizes and styles in the top-most ranks.
However, eyes have been on the big guys: Terunofuji (who has been hurting), Onosato (the up-and-comer), and Kotozakura (the boy of the sumo dynasty who does have a good chance at Yokozuna). These three are big and tall. They have an advantage in physics.
Top Maegashira July 2024
So yeah, I’m an Ura stan. I’m all about the Pink Prince. But it’s tough for him to get past these top Maegashira ranks. He’s back where I think he should be in ranking.
So we have Ura and my other short king, Tobizaru, Chaos Ape, but in general we’ve got some really big dudes in the upper right, some skinny (for sumo wrestlers) tall guys on the left, and some “mid” guys. It’s broadly spread out across heights and weights.
Bottom Maegashira July 2024
So we have mighty katasukashi master Midorifuji in the lower left, another extreme is the short and hefty Bushozan to the right. Churanoumi is also fairly short but middling weight.
(Yes, yes, nobody believes Midorifuji’s height measurement. I will keep bringing this up till that measurement gets “fixed”. I am using official JSA measurements, and am not going to change it until the JSA changes it.)
There’s a gap in the distribution from the short guys, and you’ve got some variety in sizes again.
The main thing is that you see more short wrestlers and “skinny” wrestlers at the lower ranks compared to the top-most ranks.
I love this. Fascinating to see it laid out like this. So Hokutofuji is Mr. Average then.