Profile Line-Up Before Nagoya - Plus Terunofuji
Let's Get Ready to Rumble!
I’m itching for the bouts to start…
So let me put links to all my rikishi profiles (thus far):
Rikishi profiles
In reverse chrono order:
July 2024: Hoshoryu
July 2024: Abi
June 2024: Ura
March 2024: Takerufuji [yes, I know he’s Juryo, and I believe he’s kyujo)
December 2023: Kirishima
November 2023: Kotonowaka (now Kotozakura)
November 2023: Midorifuji
November 2023: Tobizaru
As Terunofuji is supposed to be in the mix this time, let me pull in his info.
Terunofuji weight and rank graph
So sure, his rank “journey” is not that interesting. Perhaps I should have remarked upon which tournaments he actually finished and which he did not.
It may be related to his weight loss and small bounce-back.
Terunofuji has several health problems, including diabetes. He had knee surgery in October 2022. The weights in my above record came from the JSA website before each tournament, and I know they do not update the weights at the non-Tokyo venues, and even at the Tokyo venue, if the wrestler is not available, they may go with the last recorded weight. There have been some questions of accuracy of their height and weight recordings. (That is, I know I’ve questioned it, and others have questioned…)
All that throat-clearing out of the way, Terunofuji did lose muscle mass because of time out of the ring. The 14-kilogram loss from January 2022 to September 2023 is about 30 pounds, and maybe not all muscle, he did show loss of power.
Over that period, he did not finish the following tournaments:
March 2022 (out after 5 matches)
September 2022 (out after 9 matches)
November 2022 (completely absent)
January 2023 (completely absent)
March 2023 (completely absent)
July 2023 (out after 3 matches)
September 2023 (completely absent)
November 2023 (completely absent)
He was back in January 2024, and won that tournament.
He’s regained some weight, so let’s see how he does this time.
Terunofuji’s Top 10 Kimarite
Terunofuji is hands-on, and yorikiri is the top way he both wins and loses.
He’s a big guy — I was going on about how he lost weight, but he’s still 388 pounds. He’s also tall; at 192 cm, that’s about 6’4”. Shoving a guy like this around is tough - you need a grip.
So generally you get a grappling situation with Terunofuji, with both guys with a belt grip. That leads to yorikiri more than oshidashi.
Other kimarite to note:
uwatenage
kimedashi
kotenage
The uwatenage and kotenage goes without saying — as I mentioned in Hoshoryu’s profile post, Mongolian wrestling involves a lot of throws, so throwing kimarite is expected.
But kimedashi is the one painful move that is considered Terunofuji’s signature move, and woe to the unwary rikishi who tries to get an inside grip… just to get the clamps from Teru-zilla. He used the move THREE TIMES in May 2023:
Against Tobizaru (day 4), Ura (day 5), and Hoshoryu (day 11).
Ura tried to wiggle out of it … but that is a serious clamp. All three realized they were toast fairly quickly.
Spreadsheet
Hakkeyoi!