Pump You Up!
In Japan, sumo is a year-round sport requiring perpetual training. That’s at least one five-hour session before lunch (breakfast being eschewed) and a “clean” 4000-calorie diet afterwards. In public, these elite athletes must wear traditional clothes reflecting their ranking; back at the training stable, they sleep communally and live as servants of the highest ranking among them. It’s a brutal, often short, life. Little wonder, then, that many professionally trained wrestlers go rogue, and that the “amateur” tournaments they participate in are often as exciting as Japan’s Grand Sumo tournaments. During the third annual Sumo Champion Exhibition, you can actually chat-up several of the world’s most popular contenders, just prior to their bringing the pain. Mongolian-born Byambajav Ulambayar, winner of four World Sumo Championship titles was brought to Japan to train when he was only 15. He weighs in at a cool 360 pounds. Yamamotoyama Ryuta, a two-time World title holder and the heaviest native Japanese person on record, started training at seven, and currently tips the scales at 600 pounds. These two often travel together, their star-quality rapport earning them slots on The Bachelorette and various international iterations of Big Brother.
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