The Rules of Sumo

For my last entry, I will share to you all a little bit of information about the rules of this sport. The sport sumo has very few rules which can result in some exciting fights. The rules are very simple compared to Western wrestling by using 70 basic fighting techniques, the wrestlers fight to push the opponent out of the ring or make any part of the body other than feet that touches the ground. Matches only last from a few seconds to a few minutes.

During the actual fights, a sumo wrestler may use any technique except pulling his opponent’s hair, hitting his opponent with a closed fist, boxing his ears and choking his opponent. All sorts of techniques can be used during the match and a sumo wrestler usually use one of the two styles which is “oshi-zumo” the tendency to push the opponent out of the ring and “yotsu-zumo” a tendency to grab opponent’s belt and force out of the ring. At the end of each match, a “kimarite” or winning technique is announced informing the spectators exactly what method was used to win the match and the greatest advantage a wrestler can gain over his opponent is to reach around and grab his opponent’s belt thus keeping his opponent’s arm pinned near his body. This technique is called “uwate” or outside grip. Maintaining the outside grip, a wrestler commonly throws his opponent down that known as “uwate-nage” or use his position to force his opponent outside of the ring known as “yorikiri”. 

To the reader, to understand the differences of winning techniques or “kimarite” used by a sumo wrestler will greatly enhances your viewing experience. This is the end of my blog, this is all the information about this sport that I can share with all of the reader and I hope by reading my blog you can gain knowledge and understand the world of sumo and the uniqueness of this sport. Thank you very much for reading my blog and I wish a good luck to my fellow classmates to complete their assignments.