NISHINOMIYA, Hyogo Prefecture-A victory in the sumo ring may not be due to hours of disciplined practice in the ancient sport after all.<\/p>\n
Just ask Masayuki Tanaka, a wrestler trained in Olympic-style wrestling, who recently claimed victory at the National University Student Individual Sumo Championships.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old senior at Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, was recruited at the last minute to take part in the Oct. 2 tournament in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Unlike the university’s wrestling club he captains, the sumo club was a little light on players. In fact, it only had one member, captain Kazuya Tamada, 21.<\/p>\n
With the 114-year-old sumo club on what looked to be its last legs, Tanaka agreed to temporarily trade in his wrestling spandex for a mawashi, the traditional sumo costume.<\/p>\n
Without any preparation at all, he managed to toss two opponents out of the ring to win the 75-kilogram division.<\/p>\n
“I was confident my tackle would work and I could use my long reach successfully in the tournament, “said Tanaka.<\/p>\n
He says his winning technique is a basic move that spans most wrestling genres: “I got in under my opponents, held their upper back legs and took them down.”<\/p>\n
For the sumo club, the victory is twofold. With news of the win attracting attention, membership is creeping up.<\/p>\n
With a little help from Tanaka and two other wrestling club members, the club is even planning to enter a five-man team in the prestigious National University Sumo Championship to be held next month.<\/p>\n
Hopes are high for a repeat performance from Tanaka.<\/p>\n
“I will do my best out of gratitude to Tamada, who gave me the chance to try sumo, “he said.(IHT\/Asahi: October 10,2005)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NISHINOMIYA, Hyogo Prefecture-A victory in the sumo ring may not be due to hours of disciplined practice in the ancient sport after all. Just ask Masayuki Tanaka, a wrestler trained in Olympic-style wrestling, who recently claimed victory at the National University Student Individual Sumo Championships. The 21-year-old senior at Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Hyogo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling","category-olympic"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-qZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}