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Danny Cullinane's avatar

My sense of the O-A bout: if viewed as a single fight, there could be a little Yokozuna/ home fighter bias; there are competing dead body interpretations and I agree with your observations here Tim on the pushing out/down choices, but both were out of control; perhaps Onosato’s toe was the last contact of either rikishi before both left the dhoyo but I’m still not certain on that! I noted the gyoji put himself in a good position to watch (full credit on that), but the shimpan should have called a mono-ii at least so an explanation could be given for clarity. Maybe they didn’t do this to avoid setting precedents though…

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Tim Bissell's avatar

Precedent setting would be very in line with sumo/JSA. At this point it certainly feels like there's been some sort of huddle to say how, in these situations, the person in the ring should get the benefit of a doubt. I don't hate that, so long as it's consistent. If we saw Onosato win with a slap down while he's flying out the ring then I think we'd have cause to be very upset.

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