2025 Nagoya Banzuke drop! How close was my prediction?

Let's see how I did with my first ever banzuke prediction.

The banzuke for the 2025 Nagoya basho dropped last night. The banzuke is historic for being the first to include the 75th yokozuna Ōnosato. And it’s neat because it features two yokozuna, too (I haven’t forgotten about you Hōshōryū!). We haven’t had that since Hakuhō retired.

Last month I tried my hand at predicting the banzuke (for the first time ever). You can see that post below:

2025 Nagoya banzuke prediction! And last call for Cheeky Sumo giveaway

I did pretty well. Below is the actual 2025 Nagoya banzuke. I’ve included every wrestler’s record and net wins from the previous tournament. The change column represents how many ranks each wrestler has risen/fallen.

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I’ve colour coded the wrestlers here. Green means I was spot on in my prediction. Yellow means I was off by either one or a half rank. Orange means I was off by one and a half or two ranks and red means I was off by more than that. As you can see I was mostly on the money with most of these guys coloured in either green or yellow.

Below is my full banzuke prediction for comparison’s sake.

I got the easy stuff right, which is the yokozuna (we have two!!!), ōzeki and san’yaku rank. My only miss there was Takayasu being kept in as komusubi despite his three net losses. I thought Aonishiki would get an extra bump up to that rank in recognition of his stellar back-to-back performances.

Have a, have a look, two big fish.

I was mostly right, or very very close, with the opposite end of the banzuke, too. I nailed the spot for the incoming Kusano and was half a rank off with Fujinokawa (formerly Wakaikari). I was wrong about Nishikigi. I thought he would have been spared, since I didn’t think Kotoeiho had done quite enough to get himself over the last hurdle and into makuuchi this month. It’s sad to see Nishikigi go down on the two year anniversary of one of his best tournaments ever. However, sumo is the ultimate “what have you done for me, lately?” sport.

Kotoeiho and Hidenoumi coming up means we have three sets of brothers in the top division with Koteiho and Kotoshōhō, Hidenoumi and Tobizaru, joining the famous Flying Waka Bros.

The other big surprise in this banzuke is…