John Agliata – Johnny Boy Marketing

In November 2024, I was two days out of surgery to fuse my C3 and C4 vertebrae, hopped up on a lot of pain medicine and pretty much confined to the chair in my home office.

That’s when I discovered sumo wrestling on YouTube.

Perhaps I should say “rediscovered sumo wrestling,” however. I remember as a young boy tuning into Wild World of Sports on Sunday afternoon and watching coverage of immense barely clothed Japanese men slam into each other. I’m pretty sure I was the only kid in my school who new what a mawashi was.

Sitting in that chair this past November with my newly fused neck and watching sumo wrestling was like a journey back in time, and soon I was devouring the November tournament. Perhaps it was the pain pills, but I immediately gravitated to a rikishi by the name of Wakatakakage because how could you say his name and not smile? There I sat, alone in that home office, saying, “Wakatakakage” over and over and over.

Today is March 24, 2025. I’m just more than four months out of surgery and still loving sumo. The March basho just ended, with ozeki Onosato winning the Emperor’s Cup, and I somehow know what each of these things means — basho, ozeki, Emperor’s Cup.

I also am the proud owner of two sumo wrestlers’ merch — T-shirts from Wakatakakage and Onosato’s fellow ozeki, Kotozakura. I have learned all about the dohyo, the gyoji, the gunbai, and what exactly it is that the gyoji puts on the gunbai after a match.

If you don’t have a clue what the hell I’m talking about, don’t worry. I was where you were just a few short months ago. And because the only thing I’m doing in talking about all this sumo stuff with my family is driving them insane, I’ve decided to start a sumo wrestling blog so other sumo newbies (and maybe some sumo veterans who know a lot more than I do) can be informed, educated, and entertained.

So welcome to Something Sumo. In the coming days, months, and years, I hope to provide snippets of sumo knowledge, coverage of the every-other-month tournaments, a look at sumo terms, and other things sumo-related. Keep in mind, I am a sumo newbie. I’m going to get things wrong. But hopefully I won’t get them too wrong.

And in the end, my hope is to find other like-minded sumo fans to talk with and perhaps to watch the bashos with.

Hakkeyoi!

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