The world's grossest sport is no longer confined to the Japanese. Non-Japanese are making inroads in Japan, and the sport is being exported. WaPo Link. Excerpt:
[T]he last Japanese grand champion of the 2,000-year-old sport retired in January 2003. Since then, foreign-born wrestlers have reigned supreme while young amateurs from many countries have steadily climbed the professional rankings.
Rules regulating foreign wrestlers were relaxed in 1998 -- in part because of a steep decline in the sport's popularity among young Japanese athletes. The percentage of foreign professionals has grown from 2.5 percent in 1995 to more than 8 percent. More important, foreign-born sumos now make up 28 percent of the makuuchi , the upper professional ranks. A Hawaiian and a Mongolian have won the grandmaster's title in the sport of giants during the past two years.
Fueled in part by a multimillion-dollar Japanese campaign that sumo be added to the Olympics, the sport has gone global. The number of nations with important amateur circuits has more than doubled in the past decade, from 40 to 86 countries. In the United States, Las Vegas played host last month to America's first professional sumo tournament in 20 years, and two weeks ago, an exhibition was held at Madison Square Garden in New York called "World Sumo Challenge: Battle of the Giants."
