Who Was Most Unique in Hatsu 2024?
Measuring It Three Ways -- Who Had the Most Unique Winning Ways?
I’ve done this approach before, and for May 2023 I had predicted that Ura would have the most different kimarite.
I did not really define what I meant. After the basho, I tortured the data until I got the result I wanted. Ura pulled a zubuneri against Tobizaru on Day 12 in that basho.
I will return to that in a bit.
Number of kimarite in Hatsu Basho
Let’s go with the simplest definition first: number of different kimarite used to win in the tournament. There are a lot of ties.
So I put in some other information so you can make your own comparisons.
I will note that for each of Ura’s wins, he used a different kimarite each time.
You may find it interesting that the top-two guys in the Hatsu Basho, Terunofuji and Kotonowaka, who both had 13 wins (I’m not counting the playoff in the stats), had different uniqueness. Kotonowaka is in the second band of uniqueness, with 6 different kimarite (that includes fusen, from when his opponent Takayasu had withdrawn). Terunofuji was just in the group below, with 5 unique kimarite.
So the big winners do not need to mix it up a lot — and those top two got most of their wins from yorikiri and oshidashi — 6 total wins for Kotonowaka, 8 total for Terunofuji.
Really Unique Kimarite
Let’s try a different definition: kimarite used only by one Makuuchi wrestler in Hatsu 2024.
There were 6 such kimarite, and here is the complete list:
okurinage, by Hoshoryu against Wakamotoharu
makiotoshi, by Midorifuji against Myogiryu
kubinage, by Onosho against Meisei
nimaigeri, by Kirishima against Hoshoryu
kirikaeshi, by Onosato against Sadanoumi
tsutaezori, by Ura against Ryuden
Unsurprisingly, no wrestler had more than one of these.
There were rare moves that only two wrestlers did, such as tottari:
Terunofuji against Abi
Ura against Shodai
And hikkake:
Kotoshoho against Tomokaze
Takarafuji against Aoiyama
So lots of unusual moves to go around, but I will still say Ura wins. ;)
Because COME ON: tsutaezori! tottari!
Tottari is pretty common for Ura, but not that common in the Sumo Database overall:
Hmmm, he likes it against Shodai.
But tsutaezori is definitely rare:
He did this move way back in October 2013 in amateur sumo:
I self-proclaim Ura the winner
I still claim Ura wins for uniqueness:
Every single one of his six wins was a different kimarite:
yorikiri
hikiotoshi
tottari
katasukashi
tsutaezori
fusen (yeah, this one counts)
Two of those moves are rare (tottari, tsutaezori), though he seems to specialize in tottari
He’s unique!
More seriously…
That video is from a couple years ago — Over time, I hope to see if I can do analysis on how styles of long-time wrestlers change, because perhaps they do as they rise in the ranks.
I’ve really only started in my sumo statistics analysis project. For right now I’m keeping it fairly simple.
Okay, the Hellinger metric and cluster analysis isn’t simple. That’s me trying to see if I can build up new ways of looking at the stats. That may go nowhere.
However, I do intend to keep looking at how the weights and ranks of individual wrestlers fluctuate over time, differences in kimarite distributions between divisions and if there meaningful differences to comment about sumo styles via the kimarite.
And if there are ways I can keep crowning Ura the winner.
