Akebono passes at 54

[Ma Stump Puller]

Heart failure, apparently.

Rather sad end to one of the most prolific sumo wrestlers of all time and arguably one of the biggest draws ever. RIP.

 

 

 

 

[Control21]

Huge loss. Akebono was a huge star and a good wrestler to boot. RIP.

[Timbo Slice]

He was in poor health a while back. I remember he was in the hospital when I went to Japan in 2017 and it was a big deal. 
 

Dude was singular. A sad loss. 

[NintendoLogic]

He was obviously best known for his sumo career, but I liked his tag team with Ryota Hama.

Not much you can say, really. The human body just isn't meant to carry that much mass.

[William Bologna]

I really liked Akebono. It's not easy to become a wrestler in your mid-30s, and it's not easy to do much of anything when you're 500 pounds. He did it anyway and provided an irreplaceable presence in quite a few good matches.

I'm wondering who had the best sumo/puroresu number. My model is Bill James' power/speed number in baseball, which basically tried to find players who had a lot of power and a lot of speed but had to have a good amount of both. I think Akebono wins this.

• Tenryu had the best puroresu career anyone could have, but he only barely made it to the first division in sumo.
• Hiroshi Wajima was a yokozuna but only wrestled for a couple years and accomplished nothing.
• Koji Kitao did make yokozuna, but he's the worst one ever. He wrestled professionally for a long time, but you wouldn't call it a great career. I think he has the best case and still comes up short.
• Tadao Yasuda's an interesting case. He made it to komosubi, which is a rank higher than Tenryu managed. He did a lot in puroresu, for better or for worse. IWGP champion.
• Azumafuji Kin'ichi was a yokozuna who won some tag titles with Rikidozan in the 1950s. Interesting!

PS I forgot about Rikidozan! Maybe it's he. He got to third from the top in sumo. Depends how you balance it.

[fxnj]

Watching Akiyama win the Triple Crown from him live back in 2015 is probably the hardest I've ever marked out for something. Really underrated talent towards the end of his run, though it's nice that he got some reward in the form of a TC run and being the guy to lose it to Akiyama for his final run. As mentioned, he had a lot working against him with regards to having good matches, but he made it work somehow. Sad that with him and Aoki dead that we've now lost 2 key figures from my beloved mid-2010's AJPW.