Sumo scandal has Japan wondering

Mongolian muscleman Asashoryu is the focus of one of sumo’s biggest scandals ever – one that has all of Japan wondering if their cherished, ancient sport is on the take.

Sumo has been reeling since the weekly magazine Shukan Gendai published a series of articles alleging that yokozuna (grand champion) Asashoryu, 26, paid off his opponents to let him win a tournament last November, when the Mongolian marked a rare perfect 15-0 record to claim his 19th career title.

The Japan Sumo Association, which supervises professional sumo wrestling, conducted an investigation, said it found no wrongdoing, and lodged a defamation suit against the publisher of the magazine, one of the biggest in Japan.

Asashoryu, fresh off winning his 20th title in January, gruffly denied the allegations.

“I have never done anything like that,” he told reporters. “Is this how you are rewarded for getting strong?”

But things have just become worse since.

The magazine is standing by its report, which also claims that other top-ranking wrestlers have taken – or bought – falls. And, at the beginning of a tournament now underway in Osaka, western Japan, Asashoryu did something he has never done before.

He lost his first two matches (though he won his next three).

The allegations of cheating hit a particularly sensitive nerve because to most Japanese, sumo is more than just a sport.

Derived from ancient religious purification rituals, sumo competitions continue to be held on dirt rings blessed by priests, and often on the grounds of Shinto shrines. Though the six annual professional tournaments long ago moved to bigger arenas, the rings are still considered sacred ground and covered by a shrine-style roof.