Kyushu Basho '24 Prospects, Prospect Review, Makuuchi Debutants and Retirement Odds

I’ve started a bit of a recurring column on Top Prospects/Interesting Guys in Sumo. There will be more of that here, but I thought it might be worthwhile to look at how the guys I flagged before the last Basho did first. This actually helped me think a bit more about how to handle this feature going forwards. Then we cover prospects for November, and then we review the Makuuchi new debutants and close out with the retirement odds.

Prospect Review - Ozeki Analytics September Basho Guys to Watch

If you want to look at the old piece it’s here, but I actually summarized their records in the September Basho to see how they did:

I chose a really good time to start keeping track given that all 7 of the selected wrestlers went Kachikoshi and Shimizuumi won a Yusho too. Furthermore, 5 of the 7 were promoted divisions. I honestly don’t know if I’ll top this for a while.

Prospects for Kyushuu and This Feature’s Future

As I reviewed the prospects I got thinking about what I’m actually trying to do here by listing out prospects. While it was nice that I got a bunch of guys that did well last tournament, I think that’s actually not what I’m shooting for primarily. Furthermore, as I looked at guys I thought might do well I noticed we have more and more ex-college wrestlers in line with our research findings previously. A lot of those guys will tear it up in Jonokuchi or Jonidan and even Sandanme but start to top out around mid-high Makushita. So I think I have a goal with my prospect rankings going forwards.

This feature is meant to highlight wrestlers that through a combination of youth and overperformance look like they could become future Makuuchi wrestlers, particularly successful ones. It’ll definitely be a balancing act between the youth and overperformance because there are top tier college wrestler prospects under this category - you may even have heard of one, newest Ozeki, Onosato - but also, I don’t want this to just be a list of 23 year olds going 6-1 against fresh entrants to the Jonokuchi.

Furthermore, since people featured on this are usually at or around their career high ranks, Kachikoshi and greater validate selection and push expectations higher. I won’t get into Bayesian statistics, but the basic idea here is that I’m selecting these men on the idea that they’ve already performed well, and if they continue to perform well at higher and higher ranks then we should revise our expectations upwards for their potential. To analogize, if your basketball team signed a player and you expected him to shoot 40% on the season, but they shot 45% instead, you should likely expect more of that player going forwards. That’s all I’m saying here. If this is confusing let me know and maybe we’ll have a post on that topic.

I’ll also try to put a (Top Division ETA) next to each guy. I’m not super confident in this but I also figured it’d be fun to provide, it reminds me of baseball prospect watching, and hopefully writing it down will force me to work harder to actually project it in the future better.

So without further ado here are some additional guys I’m high on for Kyushuu 2024 Basho.

Kotoeiho J13W - (Late 2025 Makuuchi Debut)

Making your Juryo debut at just 21 years old is going to get you on this list. He’s been in the upper Makushita for a hot minute, so I would not be surprised if he’s able to hang in the lower Juryo. In terms of opponents, he’s already fought some of the lower Juryo itself. He has solid size and favors a Yorikiri to get guys out of the ring. If he is able to stick in the Juryo like I anticipate, I’m guessing he still might have a little more seasoning needed to make it past the upper Juryo into the Makuuchi hence the ETA.

Seihakuho Ms47E - (Late 2025-Early 2026 Makuuchi Debut)

I don’t have as many prospects I’m singling out this time around, but I’m calling my shot here.

Seihakuho not only shares the name connection with sumo GOAT (greatest of all time) Hakuho, but he’s also a Mongolian countryman with a folk wrestling pedigree from there. As the first foreigner in Hakuho’s stable, a collegiate champion, and a well sized man, I’m betting on all of this. If anything, I’m going a bit conservative - if he is good and goes ~5-2 or better in lower Makushita, he might be able to make it up to Makuuchi by mid 2025. That said, not everyone can replicate the instant success of Onosato or Takerufuji. Even so, if I have to place my chips on one of the new crop of top collegiate wrestlers to do it, it would be Seihakuho.

Ieshima Ms54E (ETA Late 2026-2027)

This one is also a bit of a shot call albeit in a different way. I don’t want to inundate you with college wrestlers tearing it up in the lower divisions and so above I pushed all-in (for this Basho at least) on Seihakuho. Here I’m plucking a lower Makushita debutant wrestler. Still just 19 years old and of slighter stature, he might still be considered what we call “a big boy.” I think the big reason I gravitated towards him is that he reminds me a bit of a discount Takakeisho. He’s also a smaller Oshidashi (pushing) specialist. I really hope he does reward my faith in him and can at least Kachikoshi, because if he does I think we could have a fun wrestler on our hands.

New Debutants

We have two new men to Makuuchi this time around, and we’ve already brought up one of them! Shishi is one of 2 Ukrainian wrestlers in sumo right now and the other is Asakoryu.

Shishi M16E

Shishi has good size and definitely has the better pedigree of the two debutants in my opinion. He hit a bit of a wall in Makushita, and took a little time to get through Juryo, but he looks like a well deserved top division wrestler. I would not be surprised to see him stick around, and even if he doesn’t, he seems like the kind of guy that could easily make it back up to the top division. Given his size, he is a fairly straightforward style where he’s looking primarily for Yorikiri and then Oshidashi as his winning methods. Hopefully he’s around for a while because I love seeing non Japanese non Mongolian wrestlers. It makes the sumo world more interesting in my opinion.

Asakoryu M17E

I’m not trying to be mean but I do think Asakoryu likely finds himself overmatched here and won’t be a stalwart at least this time in the top division. Unlike Shishi he does not have tremendous size. Additionally, he honestly got a bit lucky with his promotion; he went 11-4 from Juryo 8 and still got into the top division. He had previously gone 6-9 and 7-8 from Juryo 4, so even upper Juryo looks a bit too advanced for him. That said, the 26 year old is still just entering his prime and only has ~3-4 years of pro sumo experience. Hopefully it’s a learning experience and he can grow from it. Despite his size, Oshidashi is his go to Kimarite (winning technique)

Retirement Odds

So the full explanation can be found here but generally what I’m doing is looking at the prior tournament and using some key criteria to figure out who is most likely to retire going forwards. Age is one, if you were demoted is another, and most importantly is how many injury losses you had in the prior tournament. In other words, if you miss a bunch of matches and lose them because you were injured, that more than anything else will make you more likely to retire based on my research.

As a reminder, this is backwards looking - i.e. the odds they would have retired after the Basho. Still, if your odds are high right now, and you do poorly in Kyushuu, then that’s probably not making it less likely to retire. The other key criteria is that this is Sekitori - aka the top two divisions of Makuuchi and Juryo. Also, the Cumulative Loss Percentage is out of total matches - so 100% means all 15 were lost via injury loss.

The algorithm is humming. It honestly probably wasn’t too hard a call for a 38 year old coming off a full tournament of injury losses, but with Myogiryu, accurate is accurate. Aoiyama is probably a little more marginal but at least it had him in the top 10 of most likely to retire Sekitori.

As always I’d keep in mind for Terunofuji that he’s less likely to retire given his Yokozuna status so that’s probably pushing his odds higher than they would be otherwise. But by the same dint he is less likely to participate in a match he can because his Yokozuna status is not loseable, which also artificially pushes high odds lower. I guess what I’m saying is Yokozuna are special cases.

Thanks for reading!