Ez nagyon érdekes (bocs az angolért (copyright Cibersumo.com), majd fordítom, ha vki kéri

Ah, still not ready, eh? But I'd like to see somebody move up quickly, because there's a lot of pressure on me, being the sole yokozuna (grand champion). I think only Hakuho or Kokkai have a chance to make it. It's going to be difficult for the higher-ranked Japanese."

Shukan Gendai (Feb 5) quotes sumo yokozuna Asashoryu's remarks on Jan 18, after his closest rival, ozeki Kaio, was forced to drop out of the January tournament with a shoulder injury. Kaio won the tournament in September and finished runner-up to Asashoryu in November, and Japanese fans pinned their hopes on him to come through with another victory, or at least enough wins to earn him promotion to sumo's highest rank. Instead, however, he collapsed from the start consecutive losses and wound up dropping out by the first week.

But even if Asashoryu had not so completely dominated the tournament with an unblemished 15-0 record, Shukan Gendai feels that the showing by the Japanese grapplers has been appalling. Wakanosato, a promising sekiwake aiming for promotion to ozeki, finished with 6 wins and 9 losses, which means he faces demotion. The foreign wrestlers, on the other hand, dominated the tournament, with Asashoryu's 19-year-old compatriot komusubi Hakuho soundly defeating both ozeki and both sekiwake.

"Foreigners account for 10 out of the 42 grapplers in the Makunouchi division," says sumo authority Kiyoshi Nakazawa. "Without them, sumo couldn't make it. On the 10th day of the tournament, for example, three of the matches in the upper division paired off foreigners against each other. And they put on a good show, with a lot of speed and technique; they were interesting to watch. Rather than say interest in sumo has declined, I think you could say that the foreigners are helping to support sumo by raising interest."

Foreigner wrestlers' power, moreover, is indisputable; in a total of 95 matches against Japanese up to the tournament's 12th day, the foreigners had won 65 out of a total 95, giving them a winning percentage of .680.

"I think foreigners will continue to dominate sumo over the next decade," says an unnamed writer for a sports newspaper. "Most of the top ones are still young — like Asashoryu (24) Hakuho (19), Kotooshu (Bulgarian, 21) Kokkai (Georgian, 23) and Roho (Russian, 24) — with two others about age 30. By contrast, among the top-ranked Japanese, Kaio is 32 and most of the others are in their mid-to-late 20s. In a few more years, it wouldn't surprise me if foreigners wound up occupying the entire sanyaku (the top ranks of the makunouchi division)."

If foreigners ever come to dominate sumo to such a degree, asks Shukan Gendai rhetorically, would it then still deserve to be referred to as "kokugi" — Japan's "native sport?