Report Card: 2025 Haru Basho - Part 2

Continuing to grade the top division rikishi who were involved in the March tournament.

Welcome to the second instalment of my 2025 haru basho report card series. This time around I’m focusing on Churanoumi, Ryūden, Shishi, Nishikifuji, Ōnokatsu and Takarafuji. That’s a nice mix of young guns and grizzled vets. Churanoumi was one of the surprises of the tournament, going 10-5 and earning a kantō-shō. Ōnokatsu is chugging along and showing decent improvements. Shishi had a good tournament, too, and showed, once again, that he’s very watchable. Things didn’t go great for the other three mentioned, especially ‘the business man’ Takarafuji.

I’ll dig into the performances of these six rikishi below. But first… a sales pitch.

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OK, enough of that… let’s get to the grades.

Churanoumi

Rank: Maegashira 14 West
Record: 11-4, kantō-shō (Fighting Spirit prize)
Grade: A-

Churanoumi has taken a feast or famine approach to his sumō lately. This 11-4 record broke his two basho streak of 4-11 finishes. Before those woeful records, he went back-to-back with 10-5 records.

In March Churanoumi’s 11-4 was good for a Fighting Spirit award (his first special prize of any kind). He was among the leaders throughout the tournament and almost gate crashed the play-offs on the last day.

Churanoumi’s activity is his greatest asset. He is constantly causing pressure to his opponents, with both his hands and his footwork. He mostly pushes and thrusts with his hands, but he will also grab the belt or back of his opponent’s neck. He’s not looking for throws or slap downs when he does this, he’s just causing stress on the opponent and forcing them to adjust and defend. He lets go of the belt and neck whenever after he gets to the side of the opponent and has a chance to attack their bodies.

Churanoumi’s busyness makes up for his very poor tachiai. More often than not he is pushed back off the tachiai. But his frenzied assaults help him even the playing field. As he’s moving backwards he will fire off thrusts and use those distraction techniques mentioned earlier to halt his opponents’ forward momentum and then find an angle to get around them and then build momentum of his own.

This bout with Takayasu was a great example of that.

Takayasu managed to get Churanoumi pretty close to the boundary off the tachiai. If you look at the freeze frame below you’d assume Takayasu was able to thrust Churanoumi out from this position.

However, Churanoumi was able to claw his way back into the bout by attacking Takayasu with a range of techniques.

He pushed under Takayasu’s arm to relieve some of the pressure from his thrusts…

He put a hand in his throat to force him back…

And he grabbed the belt to put Takayasu on the defensive…

Takayasu is one of the best defensive wrestlers in the sport. But even he struggled when having to defend against this combo of moves (which came within a few seconds of each other). This gave Churanoumi time to use his speed to get himself into a good pushing position and start chipping away at the space Takayasu had behind him. Eventually, that space was all swallowed up and Churanoumi was able to score the push out. In doing so he likely cost Takayasu the yūshō (championship). Had Takayasu won this he would have had a one bout lead over Ōnosato heading into the final day.

On the final day Churanoumi faced a very motivated Daieishō. Daieishō was looking for his tenth win, something that would have kept his ōzeki dreams alive. However, it was Churanoumi who would be victorious after another bout where he had to fight back from a bad tachiai. In this bout Churanoumi used his quick feet to immediately circle out of trouble and turn the tables on Daieishō.

As you can see from the two matches above, Churanoumi fights with a lot of guts and character and is able to get himself back into bouts after those tachiai struggles. I would hope he’s working on being stronger in the tachiai, though. That would certainly make life a lot easier for him.

Ryūden

Rank: Maegashira 14 East
Record: 6-9
Grade: D

6-9 wasn’t a terrible record for Ryūden, given his age and stage. It’s probably enough to keep him in makuuchi for the May tournament.

Ryūden is a hidari-yotsu (left arm inside, right arm outside) player. However, his hidari-yotsu is a quirky one. With his right arm he favours a mae-mitsu grip, that’s a grip that is focused on the front portion of the mawashi (as opposed to the area right on the opponent’s hip). Ryūden likes to have the front grip with his right and then keep his hips as far back as he can. He likes to push forwards from this position, with his head in his opponent’s chest and his arms narrow. This technique means a lot of his pushing power is coming from his biceps and shoulders. He doesn’t like to do what most other yotsu stylists do; which is get their grip, go chest-to-chest and then generating pushing power from their lower bodies.

Ryūden’s decision to push from a crouched position, using his arms more than his hips and knees might be due to the serious pelvis injury he suffered his twenties.

His reliance on this style means that he is quite easy to beat when an opponent is able to force him to stand upright and fight a more orthodox chest-to-chest. Takarafuji, Shirokuma, Meisei and Ōnokatsu were all able to score yorikiri (frontal force out) wins on him due to that.

Ryūden’s crouching/leaning style also makes him easy pray for Midorifuji and his katasukashi (under shoulder swing down). Midorifuji was able to catch him with that move in March. That’s the fifth time (in six bouts) that Midorifuji has beaten Ryūden by katasukashi.

Shishi

Rank: Maegashira 13 West
Record: 9-6
Grade: B

Shishi earned his first top division kachi-koshi (winning record) in March. Shishi’s odd, and frankly humourus, style means he has to rack up a lot of wins for us to think of him as something more than a ‘banter wrestler’. These nine wins help his case here. But, right now, he remains a wrestler who is fun to watch, but not someone who inspires much confidence.

Shishi likes to get his right arm on the inside during his bouts, but he’s not really going for a migi-yotsu (right arm inside, left arm outside grip). His style is a more unorthodox. He likes to establish a shitate (under arm) with his right arm and pull upwards, forcing his opponents to twist and become unbalanced. Against smaller opponents this can force them to raise a foot and give Shishi an easy time of forcing them out.

Rarely, Shishi will use this pressure on the left side of his opponents’ bodies to disguise his attacks on their right side. Twice in March he was able to get a good grip on the belt with his left hand and surprise his opponents with a finishing move there. The best of those wins was this one against Wakamotoharu.

In this bout Wakamotoharu was mesmerized by all that pressure under his left arm and he didn’t notice that Shishi had secured a very deep grip on the opposite side of his belt. Before he knew what was happening he was being dragged out of position and being pushed over the straw.

Shishi’s long arms helped him reach for Wakamotoharu’s belt in this bout. I think this is a technique he can find a lot of success with and I’ll be watching carefully in May to see how often he’s able to catch guys out like this.

One thing he has to work on, though, is how telegraphed his right arm inside move is. He winds up like a baseball pitcher as he moves forwards in the tachiai looking to hook that arm inside his opponent’s arm pit (see the below loss to Tamawashi as an example). We might see more guys blocking that off the tachiai.

Nishikifuji

Rank: Maegashira 13 East
Record: 0-2-13
Grade: Ungraded

No grade for Nishikifuji this time around. He has enough to worry about. The Isegahama man competed on day one, losing via tsuridashi (frontal lift out) to Ōnokatsu. He went kyūjō (absent due to injury) for the remainder of the tournament. This record should cost him his place in makuuchi.

Ōnokatsu

Rank: Maegashira 12 West
Record: 10-5
Grade: B

This was a very good tournament for Ōnokatsu and this is the most wins he’s had in his young career. I think it’s safe to say that the 24 year-old Mongolian is makuuchi material. That being said, his sumō is pretty hard to get excited over…