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Hengtee Lim's avatar

I don't think I've ever seen Wakamotoharu beat Hoshoryu. The match up always strikes me as kryptonite for Waka.

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Tim Bissell's avatar

Hoshoryu is 16-3 against Wakamotoharu and he's won the last ten in a row. That's just a terrible match-up for Wakamotoharu. He needs to get on a belt to win, most often, and every time he does that to Hoshoryu he puts himself in prime position to get tossed.

Here's a cool video of Wakamotoharu getting a sukuinage win over him in his juryo days: https://www.youtube.com/embed/j31DgHEChG4?autoplay=1

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Jack of all's avatar

Thank you about comment about the clay. Never occurred to me it would always be slightly different. I think it got Ura also. I wondered why it looked like he was going for a single leg takedown. After watching the start a few times it looks like he had both feet slip a tiny bit sending his center of balance a bit forward.

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Tim Bissell's avatar

The yobidashi water the surface the a little. I think they do that by eye/feel, so there can be variances.

The next tournament, in Nagoya, is notorious for a slippery surface. That's because it gets so hot there in July and the surface gets a lot of sweat on it.

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