It's Summer Sumo Time!

It's Summer Sumo Time! -- Did you know that the single current sport with the longest continuously recorded records -- about 900 years, if memory serves -- is sumo?

It's one of the simplest, and therefore, to my mind, purest competition between two people. Two guys and a ref enter a 15-foot circle of clay, and the first to be pushed, thrown, or otherwise finessed out of the circle, of to touch the ground with anything other than his feet, loses. A few sensible restrictions round out the rules...

Striking with fists, hair pulling, eye gouging, choking and kicking in the stomach or chest are prohibited. It is also against the rules to seize the part of the band covering the vital organs.

(Athough wedgies are permitted.)

The July Basho (one of six 15-day tournaments per year) is set to start on July 6 in Nagoya. Broadcast here in the states on NHK's cable/satellite channel live at about 3 in the morning (in the US east coast) and repeated about 12 hours later, live streaming video (if you're up at that hour) is also available online. Unfortunately, they don't archive them for later viewing. There are also good daily English language reports, written in colorful sports page cliches, available from the Mainichi Daily News.

This basho is of particular interest with the return of American yokozuna (top ranking champion) Musashimaru to active duty after missing several tournaments due to injury. This will be the first time that the exciting, recently elevated Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu will face one of equal rank since attaining that level. It should be interesting to watch the younger, smaller Mongolian deal with one of the really big boys still stepping into the dohyo.

Here's a taste of the resilient Asashoryu (579kb RealVideo download) in the most recent May Basho, from a collection of recent years tournaments -- some with English language commentary that I can't get on my cable system.