Sumo: Hoshoryu Captures New Year Title in 3-Way Playoff

Jiji Press
Ozeki Hoshoryu, right, defeats No. 3 maegashira Oho to win a three-way championship playoff and the title at the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament on Sunday in Tokyo.

Ozeki Hoshoryu needed some help to get into a three-way championship playoff. He didn’t have to wait long to see that winning the playoff will likely be enough to ensure his promotion to yokozuna.

Hoshoryu defeated maegashira-ranked wrestlers Kinbozan and Oho in consecutive matches in the playoff to win his second career title at the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament at Tokyo’s Ryogoku Kokugikan on Sunday.

“I was given the chance and I didn’t want to waste it,” said Hoshoryu, who added to the title he won in Nagoya in July 2023.

Combined with his runner-up finish at the previous Kyushu tournament with a 13-2 record, the victory on Sunday appears to be good enough to ensure his promotion to yokozuna. An emergency meeting of the Yokozuna Deliberation Council has been called for tomorrow, normally an indication that the promotion is assured.

The only sticking point will be that Hoshoryu’s three losses were to maegashira-ranked wrestlers, which will surely be brought up in the promotion discussion. Still, timing may be on his side as sumo just saw the retirement of lone yokozuna Terunofuji during the tournament.

Asked about pre-tournament talk about pursuing promotion, he replied, “I just concentrated on one bout one day at a time, and the results would follow,” he said.

No. 14 maegashira Kinbozan could have won the title outright with a victory in his final match against No. 3 maegashira Oho, which would have made his native Kazakhstan the sixth country outside of Japan to produce a champion.

But Oho, the grandson of legendary yokozuna Taiho, kept his own title hopes alive by forcing Kinbozan out of the ring to leave both with 12-3 records and set up the playoff.

Still to be decided was how many wrestlers would be involved in the playoff, and Hoshoryu made it a trio with a victory in the final regulation bout of the day over fellow ozeki Kotozakura, who ended a disastrous tournament with a 5-10 record. That avenged a loss to Kotozakura in the de facto championship match of the previous Kyushu tournament in November.

Hoshoryu had defeated both Kinbozan and Oho earlier in the tournament, and he went into both bouts fired up and brimming with confidence. First, he gained a belt hold on Kinbozan and shuffled him out of the ring. Oho put up more resistance, but he also ended up being forced out by the 25-year-old Mongolian.

Hoshoryu won his first four matches of the tournament, but then lost three of his next five and had to play catch-up the rest of the way.

“My stablemaster told me to enjoy doing sumo, and that advice pushed me to keep going forward,” Hoshoryu said.

The three-way playoff was the first since the Kyushu tournament in November 2022, in which then-No. 9 maegashira Abi came away with the title over No. 1 maegashira Takayasu and ozeki Takakeisho.

Kinbozan became the talk of tournament during his unexpected title run in his return to the makuuchi division.

He had spent 10 tournaments in the makuuchi division, reaching a career-high No. 5 maegashira at one point, before being demoted to the juryo division. But he returned to the top division after winning the juryo title at the Kyu-shu tournament with a 12-3 record.

For his effort, Kinbozan was awarded the Fighting Spirit Prize along with No. 1 maegashira Kirshima, who finished with an 11-4 record. Oho received the Technique Prize.

Kotozakura could have earned promotion to yokozuna by winning the title or posting an “equivalent” performance, but was quickly derailed when he lost five straight matches from the second day. He was dealt his makekoshi eighth loss on the 13th day, and will now need to gain a majority of wins in the next tournament just to remain an ozeki.

For the second consecutive tournament, a foreign-born wrestler won the juryo division title. Following up on Kinbozan’s victory in November was Ukraine’s Shishi, who finished with a 13-2 record. And, like Kinbozan, he did it after being demoted from the makuuchi division.