Sumo Wrestling

Today, we went to watch Sumo wrestling at the Fukuoka International Centre. I got there first, along with Drummond and Rushen, at about 1.30pm and the others trickled in later. Chip even showed his face for about an hour. We were at the very back of the arena, but that meant we had seats. Everyone in front of us had blue mats to sit on, but a better view. Even our tickets were £25, so who knows how much a front row ticket cost. Hopefully it came with health insurance as the wrestlers rolled into the crowd on a few occasions.

Sumo is a highly traditional and ritualised sport, which makes it interesting to watch (at least to start with). Before each match, a man stands in the ring and sings something. I presume he was announcing the players. The wrestlers then enter the ring, bow, and start performing their warm-up rituals. This involves raising each leg in turn high in the air and then stomping it down. One guy even managed the splits like this, much to the audiences delight. However, I think he showed off a little to much as he promptly lost his bout.

After the warm-ups they go back to the centre of the ring and crouch down. When they are ready they place both hands on the ground in front of them. As soon as they are both ready they pounce on each other and the fight begins. The interesting thing is the out-psyching they try and perform on each other by repeatedly standing up and walking off to do more warming up. This is allowed to continue for four minutes before they must fight. The amazing thing is that this time limit is a newly created thing, and the first time limit imposed was for 10 minutes! The whole show must have used to carry on well into the night!

The fights themselves are most often very short-lived, often over in a matter of seconds. There is the occasional deadlock, though, which makes the bout last a few minutes. A wrestler loses when any part of them falls outside of the ring, or if any part of them apart from the soles of their feet touch the floor. Mostly, people won by pushing the other out of the ring, but there were a few topples; some even slipped and fell of their own accord.

The best fight were at the end, between the big names. An up-and-coming Bulgarian fighter of 6'7" threw his opponent within two seconds, and the grand master was victorious after a little struggle.

All-in-all, a very enjoyable day, but take a friend, if you ever go, to talk to between bouts.