What Makes An Ozeki

Looking through modern sumo history (1958-Present) to tease out insights

                There is something beautiful about the meritocratic nature of sumo wrestling. Since the 1950s there have been six tournaments per year, and the rule is simple: if you win more matches than you lose, you will rise in the ranks. Obviously, the more wins, the quicker you rise through the ranks, but even if you’re starting from the bottom getting consistent, barely winning, 4-3 records (4 wins, 3 losses, as you only fight 7 matches in the lower levels), you’ll eventually reach the upper paid divisions. You could fight your way up the ranks while never winning more than 8 matches in a tournament (in the upper levels, there are 15 matches per tournament, thus 8-7 is the minimum winning record), and you would still reach the top division and the top of the sumo world.

                Well, that’s not quite true. Two ranks stand above all others in not only literally where they sit on the Banzuke (the tournament sheet, with higher ranks up top), but also their prestige, and in the requirements to reach them. Yokozuna is the peak of sumo. If sumo had a hall of fame, then it would be dominated by Yokozuna. When not injured, Yokozuna are expected to be competing to win the Yusho (the tournament) every time. In fact, when lower ranked sumo beat a Yokozuna they receive a Kinboshi (Japanese for: gold star). That’s how impressive beating a Yokozuna is.

                But before you become a Yokozuna, you must first become an Ozeki, and Ozeki, like Yokozuna, does not have a specific criterion to gain entrance to those ranks. There are some general heuristics and past precedence that point to what is required to gain Ozeki promotion, but today I will walk through some of the data on Ozeki to see what we can learn and if indeed those heuristics are accurate. In the next post we’ll then go over similar exercises for Yokozuna but given only ~70 men among the thousands of wrestlers have attained the Ozeki rank since 1958, I think they’re worthy of our attention too.

                Wikipedia lists the basics for Ozeki promotion, and I believe they line up well with what the sumo fan community views as the prerequisites. They are as follows:

“The promotion of a wrestler to ōzeki is a multi-tournament process. A wrestler at the rank of sekiwake will be considered for promotion if he has achieved a total of at least 33 wins over the three most recent tournaments, including ten or more wins in the tournament just completed. Promotion is discretionary and there are no hard-and-fast rules, though a three-tournament record of 33 wins is considered a near-guarantee. Other factors toward promotion will include tangibles such as winning a tournament or defeating Yokozuna, as well as the wrestler's overall consistency, prowess, and quality of sumo—for example, a record of illegal maneuvers or reliance on certain dodging techniques would count against the dignity expected of an ōzeki.”[1]

Defeating a Yokozuna or the absence of “certain dodging techniques”[2] are topics for another time, but the 33 wins is a great hypothesis to examine.

                To test this, I looked at all the sumo wrestlers who reached the Ozeki rank. Among those wrestlers, I looked at their average number of wins in each tournament and indexed that relative to when they became an Ozeki. So, if a wrestler reached Ozeki and wrestled at that rank in May 2019, their first tournament would be classified as their 0^th tournament at the rank (apologies for using programming convention). To repeat, Ozeki is commonly thought to require 33 wins in the prior 3 tournaments, so that means averaging 11 wins per tournament at the -3, -2, and -1 tournaments. So, continuing the example, the -1 tournament for that wrestler is March 2019, -2 is January 2019, -3 is November 2018 and so on.

I grabbed the data for all sumo wrestlers who reached Ozeki rank in the modern era (1958-Present) and then charted how many wins they have on average in each tournament relative to when they debuted at Ozeki.

Looking above, we can see that there is in fact a ramp up in the number of wins prior to being promoted to Ozeki. There really does seem to be a concerted effort and genuine push when on the precipice of attaining the prestigious rank as evidenced by a full win difference in the final Ozeki run tournament. However, what is interesting is that even though this chart includes wrestlers that went on to reach the Yokozuna rank, the average number of wins is just over 33 (33.10 to be precise). The median number of wins is also in fact 33 wins too, so 33 wins is the magic number, but is not the minimum.

Interestingly, splitting the data out by peak rank we see that those who peak at Ozeki perform more or less the same during their Ozeki runs as those who go on to reach the Yokozuna rank. In fact, it’s only after the reaching Ozeki that we start to see a difference between those two groups, with the future Yokozuna performing much better than those who have reached their peak. Another interesting bit from the chart below is that the Ozeki hangover is in fact real; anecdotally, those making their Ozeki debut seem to perform worse. There’s a reasonable explanation: there are a lot of ceremonies to attend accompanying the promotion. Furthermore, with on average 12+ wins, there’s also possibly dealing with further ceremony as a result of a tournament win (or second place finish)

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                So, this data shows that 33 wins in 3 tournaments is the number that gets you to Ozeki, but there are other rules and fun data we can tease out by digging in further. In no particular order:

• 7 wins in a tournament is the absolute minimum number of wins on an Ozeki run.

  • This has happened twice: May 1959 by Wakahaguro and September 1974 by Kaiketsu

  • Neither of them reached Yokozuna

  • This was on the first tournament of each of their runs, and given how much time has passed, we can reasonably conclude 7 wins or fewer in the modern day is disqualifying for an Ozeki run

    • Wakahaguro then had 11 wins and 12 wins with a Jun Yusho in the latter to wrap up his Ozeki run

    • Kaiketsu had 12 wins and 11 wins as his follow up tournaments for his Ozeki run

      • He won a Yusho and Jun Yusho respectively, so it’s impossible to know, but that likely smoothed the process for him

      • In fact, he was demoted to Komosubi for the 2^nd tournament of the run

• 32 wins is the minimum number of wins for an Ozeki run.

  • 11 men have reached Ozeki with fewer than 32 wins on their Ozeki run

  • However, digging into the data reveals a more complex picture

    • 2 men reached Ozeki with 28 wins, both in the 1960’s

    • Nobody has reached Ozeki with 29 wins

    • 5 men have reached Ozeki with 30 wins, but all 5 were before 1976

    • 4 men have reached Ozeki with 31 wins

      • However, they were all prior to 1986

      • They all won a Jun-Yusho or outright Yusho in their final tournament of the run, likely giving them a boost

      • Coincidentally, they all finished with a strong 12-3 record, which is in line with the average of 12 wins in the final tournament of an Ozeki run

  • 9 men have reached Ozeki with 32 wins showing a greater prevalence of this record as being “Ozeki worthy” so to speak

    • Furthermore 4 of those runs have come since 2010, showing this rule is operative

    • A Yusho or Jun-Yusho is immensely helpful here as 8/11 of those wrestlers had one in their final tournament

    • A strong finish helps

      • Only 4 had fewer than 13 wins in their final tournament

      • One of those 4 had 12 wins in their final tournament, another strong record, with that wrestler, Goeido winning the runner-up Jun-Yusho

    • If all else fails, hopefully you’re Japanese

      • Neither Kisenosato nor Asanoyama reached 12 wins (Kisenosato had 10!) in their final tournament

      • As you might have guessed, neither did those 2 win a Jun-Yusho much less a Yusho in that final tournament

• Being a high-ranking Rikishi is important, but perhaps not as important as one assumes.

  • Of the 64 wrestlers in this dataset (1958 on), 31 of them had a tournament at Komosubi or lower in their Ozeki run, representing 48%!

    • This one really surprised me

  • 6 wrestlers had a tournament in their Ozeki run that included wrestling from a Maegashira position

  • 2 occurred in the 60s

  • 2 occurred in the 80s, including the notorious Futahaguro

  • 2 occurred in the 2010s

    • Terunofuji won 8 from Maegashira 2, but his 25 wins over the next two tournaments alongside a Yusho and Jun-Yusho (runner up) surely made up for that

      • Please note this is his 2015 Ozeki run.

    • Tochinoshin won 14 and a Yusho from Maegashira 3, so given that total and his 23 wins in the next two tournaments, that’s understandable

      • I have a future planned piece about how special this run was given it’s tied for the highest win total on an Ozeki run. Tochinoshin, take a bow

  • These all were the first tournament of a run, so we can also say that no more than one tournament in an Ozeki run can be from the Maegashira ranks.

  • While there are 28 instances of a tournament at Komosubi in an Ozeki run, only 5 of those instances weren’t the first tournament.

    • All 5 times it was their penultimate tournament, not their final tournament of an Ozeki run

  • In other words, 0 times has an Ozeki been promoted directly from Komosubi or lower

  • So, we can say that you cannot be promoted to Ozeki from Komosubi or lower, and if you’re at Komosubi, you’ll almost certainly need two more strong tournament performances, almost never one more.

• No Ozeki run has included a Zensho Yusho (going 15-0)

  • I was extremely surprised Hakuho did not do this, and even more so that nobody else has either

  • In fact, of the 67 modern Ozeki runs (1958-present), representing 201 tournaments, only 11 have featured a 14-1 record. That’s just over 5%!

  • On the other hand, in those 201 tournaments, 85 have featured a Yusho or Jun-Yusho for the soon-to-be Ozeki.

  • Out of those 67 Ozeki, only 7 didn’t win a Jun-Yusho or Yusho in their Ozeki runs.

    • Fittingly, given his recent week 2 misfortune, Takayasu is the most recent Ozeki to lack the cherry on top of his run

    • Interestingly, prior to him the last Ozeki to lack a tournament win or runner-up finish in their run was Asahifuji in 1987

      • Fortunately, this future Yokozuna (and current, top-tier coach) won his first top division tournament in his second tournament as an Ozeki and went on to win 3 more

  • That said, looking at the evidence I do not believe that a Yusho or Jun-Yusho is a prerequisite for Ozeki promotion. Rather, 33 wins on average over 3 tournaments is overwhelmingly likely to feature a Yusho or Jun-Yusho

Hopefully you enjoyed some of these fun facts and tidbits and now have a slightly better lens through which to view your favorite wrestler as they aim to reach the top – or at least Ozeki.

                This is the first column for Ozeki Analytics and I’m finding my feet for it, so any feedback is appreciated! As for the future, I intend to post at least once a week and have many exciting articles already planned, some of which are below.

• This exercise but for Yokozuna

• A preview of the upcoming tournament from the perspective of who might be on an Ozeki run

• A look at the most impressive tournament by Ozeki as a group ever

  • It featured 3 future Yokozuna and the 4 of them averaged 13 wins and won the Yusho and Jun-Yusho

• A deep dive into Tochinoshin’s Ozeki run and the 3 other men who tied him with the 37 wins over 3 tournaments to reach Ozeki

• Longer term: constructing an ELO ranking of wrestlers in the Makuuchi

  • Preliminary coding work is started and it’s looking viable so it’s just a matter of putting my nose to the grindstone

• Longer term: my dataset is currently just Ozeki and Yokozuna so I’m looking to further refine the existing code and pull the full Makuuchi ranks and possibly Juryo too to look at development paths for wrestlers

• Longer term: looking at volatility of win totals for wrestlers

  • Potentially related: looking into injuries

• If you have any other ideas, feel free to message me on any of my channels and I’d be happy to credit if it does become an article

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makuuchi#%C5%8Czeki

[2] Sumo fans’ minds immediately went to Henka