Results tagged “sumo”

                   

The 8th Annual US Sumo Open came to the Los Angeles Sports Arena on Saturday. As expected, this yearly demonstration of the popular Japanese sport drew a colorful array of competitors. While the women's division was cut short by a combination of last minute dropouts and injuries, the heavyweights more than made up for the loss with a ton of great matches.

Photo by Chuck Green

It was almost a year ago that LAist was blown away by the US Sumo Open at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. The day of amateur sumo wrestling action, yakisoba noodles and free sake made us understand why the sport is followed so religiously in Japan. With the lousy weather keeping us homebound this weekend, it seemed like a good time to start researching the 2008 event, as we’re anxious to see the return of flamboyant Norwegian champ Hans Borg, root against those seemingly villainous Bulgarians, marvel at the skills of the Mongolians and root for (while trying not to drool over) bodacious ladies sumo vixen Florence Bannout.

It’s the day after the 2007 US Sumo Open, and we have officially drank the Kool-Aid. We'd seen those documentaries on TLC about how sumo wrestlers are celebrities in Japan, and how its top practitioners are afforded the life of rock stars, and we giggled about how kooky the Japanese are. But now we understand their obsession, and we've decided that if Sumo were simply exposed to more Americans, it would be just as much of a hit here as it is in Japan.

Despite the fact that only about 8 of the 50 competitors at Saturday’s 2007 US Sumo Open will be women, LAist is simply giddy about the prospect of watching two girls charge each other like a couple of rhinos. We already feel blessed that our city is the home of some of the country’s best girl on girl roller derby action, so it’s hard not to get excited by the mawashi-clad ladies of sumo taking it up a notch.