[sumo] Re: News article - Whats the best job in sumo

[Asashosakari at gmx.net]

Briefly delurking before I go back to my SML retirement and posting game announcements only...

Barbara wrote:
> But it asks us to tolerate, for long periods of time, a situation in 
> which today, right now, a sekiwake may be a better rikishi than the 
> ozeki ranked over him, yet be unable to penetrate the rank.  Worse, it 
> asks the sekiwake himself to tolerate it.

What's stopping that mythical sekiwake from just posting 33 wins in three basho? If the ozeki are so weak, they shouldn't pose much of a problem; even more so if they're absent half the time anyway and that sekiwake gets to face additional maegashira instead. 


> My suggestion to make it easier for ozeki to lose their rank would not 
> result in long periods of NO ozeki, because as I stated in my message, 
> the whole point of doing so is to perhaps allow the ozeki promotion 
> requirements to be eased as well.

How far would you relax the requirements...30 wins in three basho? 27? Any three sanyaku kachi-koshi? 

With 30 wins, we would have had exactly three additional ozeki in the last 20 years - Kotonishiki, Wakanosato and Tochinowaka. (Hands up everyone who has *ever* thought of Tochinowaka as ozeki material...) And all three posted exactly 30 wins, so it's not like they just barely missed the existing 33-win mark. Everybody else who reached 30 wins also reached 33 wins at some point, or in Chiyotaikai's case 32 wins with a yusho which was also deemed sufficient for promotion. (He got 33 as an ozeki later on.)

Even relaxing the standard to just 27 wins wouldn't have added a whole lot of new ozeki...Kotogaume, Akinoshima and recently Ama, on top of the previous three. Does anybody think that Ama is a stronger rikishi than our current four ozeki? He might well be their equal, but since you're already discontent with the performances of those ozeki, I'm not sure I see the wisdom of a solution that ensures *even more* weak ozeki for the future.

So in summary, what you'd achieve is that some/many of the rikishi who are most likely to make ozeki anyway would do so earlier in their careers, plus a few more guys who would quickly disappear to maegashira hell again. In return, your toughened standards for keeping the rank would likely make sure that even the "real" ozekis won't last nearly as long. (In part because you end up promoting talented rikishi who aren't nearly ready yet.) I suppose they'd also have a somewhat easier path to return to ozeki after their inevitable demotion, but I don't see how that's a good thing. Most people here and elsewhere didn't seem all that thrilled about Tochiazuma dropping and returning not just once but twice.


> As it is now, the ozeki rank is something of a logjam in the heirarchy.

As they say, that's not a bug, that's a feature. For the longest time, ozeki was *the* highest rank in ozumo - it's still supposed to be prestigious, difficult to attain and ideally the gateway to the tsuna. Watering it down so that it's nothing more than a premium sekiwake rank is clearly not what the Kyokai has in mind, and for good reason.

I don't even want to imagine a scenario where the ozeki rank turns into a revolving door and simultaneously it still takes two ozeki yusho to be promoted to yokozuna. People already complain that the quality difference between the yokozunas and the ozekis is too large.


> Perversely, having weak ozeki holding down the rank seems to lead to a 
> popular perception that the rank is already too easy to attain.

No offense, but that's quite seriously the first time *ever* that I've heard of this "popular" perception, and I spend a lot of time discussing banzuke mechanics and rikishi strengths with other fans. 


> Even if they end up retiring in Sandanme 10 years later, if they ever 
> reached the rank of ozeki, they will become known as "former ozeki". 
> The honor follows them anyway.

Wouldn't be much of an honor anymore after the rank has been robbed of most of its prestige. Your only goal in suggesting these changes may be to make things "more fair", but suffice it to say that I don't share your apparent outlook that there would be no other consequences whatsoever.


> Meantime, the additional promotions and demotions would add more drama 
> to the tournaments and some extra headlines between the bashos.

Like the huge amount of headlines that a sekiwake debut creates these days? Ozeki promotions and demotions attract the fans' attention because they're *rare and meaningful*; making them just another regular event is a great way to desensitize people to them altogether. 

In any case, the current situation is a historical anomaly: we're watching two of the greatest non-yokozuna of the last 100 years (at least one of whom would have become a yokozuna if he'd been active 25 years earlier) winding down their careers at the same time. The number of injuries that Kaio and Taikai have had over the past few years would have killed any regular ozeki career long ago, but because they're falling down from such a high level their decline phase has lasted a lot longer than normal. The other two ozeki are just the usual rank filler that has always existed, and while their records may not look glamorous they're completely par for the course as far as average to slightly below-average ozeki careers go.

At the same time, there's been a huge influx of new, young talent into the upper ranks during the last two or three years. (Remember just a few years ago when non-descript guys like Tosanoumi or Tamanoshima were still making regular sanyaku appearances?) Most of that new talent hasn't sufficiently matured yet, so for now we have a situation where everyone from ozeki to M3 is sort of equal. It's not just the ozekis who don't stand out any longer; none of the new guys currently stand out from one another, either. It's not going to last for long, I dare say, and I for one am just going to enjoy the ride until the next crop of steady ozeki has risen. (We can only hope there'll be another one like Kaio and Chiyotaikai among them, let alone two.) At any rate, trying to speed up the process with some haphazard rule changes is definitely not the solution, IMHO.

/Asashosakari