i’m confused. I thought Aonishiki won. Onosato was already down on his left knee before A* touched the ground.
I’ve started following sumo this summer after stumbling on a post from this community. I need more information about this
tldr: in sumo, if person A is flying out of the ring, and person B who is inside the ring falls down first, person B still wins.
So… I’m not an expert, but I think this is the explanation:
Shini-tai (死に体) is a term used in sumo wrestling. In general, the first sumo wrestler to touch any body part outside the ring, or have any part of his body other than the soles of his feet touch the ground loses. There are exceptions to the rule, shini-tai being one of them.
Literally meaning ‘dead body’ or ‘dying body,’ the term is used to describe a wrestler who was not first to fall or touch outside the ring, but who had no chance of winning owing to the superior technique of his opponent (and his falling position).[1] Whilst a relatively rare event, it is most often seen after close bouts in which one wrestler clearly had the advantage towards the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shini-tai
So, consider the very last moment just before Onosato hit the floor.
At that moment, Aonishiki was in the air, outside of the ring, and there was no way Aonishiki could have landed on his feet inside the ring. The gyoji in the ring observed this and declared Onosato the winner, and one of the ringside referees could have objected if they disagreed with the call.
HOWEVER … this is not very satisfying, because it seems like Aonishiki was in charge the whole time, controlling Onosato with his left hand and pushing him down with his right. As @not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world points out, Onosato was also thrust down because of Aonishiki’s technique.
BUT… I tentatively think that the referees made the right call. Aonishiki was flying backward for a reason, namely Onosato’s forward motion. So the fact that Aonishiki did a technique on Onosato as Aonishiki was being thrust out of the dohyo isn’t really relevant; there was no way for Aonishiki to win, because he could not and did not land inside the ring. That’s just one of the rules of sumo.
CONSIDER: if Aonishiki had done an Ura-like roll right over Onosato and landed on his feet inside the ring. That would have been epic. Or even landed on top of Onosato inside the ring and then climbed off. Unfortunately, Aonishiki had no forward momentum.
Conclusion: it was a close match, and it would have been more satisfying to the audience if the referees had conferred, but I think they made the right call.
While I agree with your analysis, I do believe that Onosato got a bit of a yokozuna bonus here. I think a rematch would have been a better call.
Maybe they were extra hard on him specifically because he’s on his Ozeki run. Should still have been a rematch if that’s the case tho. Can you imagine Ao wins the yusho and gets the promotion early with such a controversial “win” on his record?
The more I think of it, I can see how it was a clear-cut call from the gyoji’s perspective.
- They have to be ready to make the “winner” call the second after the match is over, and they really don’t have time to reason about things like Ozeki runs.
- if they go by prejudicial gut feelings (like favoring higher ranks or favoring Japanese people) they’re going to make enough bad calls that they won’t be promoted to reffing the Makuuchi matches.
- There’s probably an IF-THEN in their head like “if a single wrestler is flying out of the ring, then they lose.” That IF-THEN was applied before the “if someone hits the ground inside the ring then they lose” was needed.
Aonishiki did an outstanding job, but it’s a lot like in football/soccer where someone makes a beautiful goal but it turns out they were a couple feet offsides so the goal is invalidated. It sucks, but those are the rules.
Yeah but that could have been the reasoning behind the lack of mono-ii.
Actually now I wanna watch the slowmo again because I think Ao had Ono’s belt the whole time he was flying, so he could have Ura’d himself back into the ring and wasn’t really “dead.”
Ok I watched the slowmo. Here’s what I see, as a clueless gaijin, might be different to what others see.
Ao had Ono’s belt with his left hand. Ono steps forward with right leg, maybe bumps Ao’s leg maybe not, but Ono slips with that right foot and falls towards. Ono’s falling momentum skittles Ao’s legs out from under him, so they’re both falling towards each other with forward rotation, but Ono has more forward momentum, having started falling earlier and being closer to horizontal already, so Ao is flying backwards while rotating forwards, and as we saw his feet eventually land outside. Ao didn’t jump, he was knocked back, feet first. So my idea of his belt grip enabling him to pivot forwards was far-fetched. He was already out of control.
So Onosato fell first. Hit the ground first. And whether thru skill or yokozuna luck he managed to execute a winning move while falling, launching Aonishiki in such a way that he couldn’t land in the ring.
I still think it should have been a rematch, because Ono was already falling out of control with no way of landing on his feet when he skittled Ao.
Maybe the real question is why do I care so much about this bout? Must be something about sumo…
I still think it should have been a rematch, because Ono was already falling out of control with no way of landing on his feet when he skittled Ao.
It’s possible that the rules are different for a “dead body” inside the ring versus outside the ring. I dunno tho…
Maybe the real question is why do I care so much about this bout? Must be something about sumo…
Part of the charm is that it’s so fast. The whole thing was over in 20 seconds, and many bouts are even quicker. Yet there’s a lot of grabbing, turning, hitting, throwing, etc that goes on in that brief amount of time. For example, your previous comment is about who had the momentum and what they were doing – over the course of like 3-4 seconds!
thanks for taking the time to explain
It looked to me like Bluey was in charge of the whole manoeuvre, he jumped back pulling Ono down and off balance. Problem was he jumped out. So shini-tai applied to him like 100ms before Ono’s knee hit the dohyo, when he started the jump.
I thought so too. It looked to me like the “dead body rule” could apply equally to both. Aonishiki was flying out unstoppbably while Onosato was flying face downwards unstoppably.
Ah spoilers!
I’m always at least a day behind because of time difference. Don’t know the rules in the community but if I get spoilers, I’m out fast.
sorry, i will take care not to spoil when i post here
@Sergio@piefed.social , i think it’s too late for this one. It’s a good idea to keep the spoilers and discussion to comments. (“rnercle” won’t work to mention, you should use the account name @merde@sh.itjust.works
It’s not a problem, we’re still figuring out the community rules. The suggestion I made in the “how to watch” post is (slightly edited):
- if you make a POST, please make sure the image does not show the result of a match that happened the previous 1-2 days. Likewise with text.
- if you make a COMMENT it is OK to discuss results up to the day of the post. so if the post is about day 13, please don’t talk about day 15 even if it’s already happened.
We might need a moderator tho. I’ll make a post on Monday asking for volunteers. You’re welcome to be a moderator!
Oh yeah, good point… hmm… we don’t really have community rules, personally I was:
- keeping spoilers in comments, that way people wouldn’t see the spoilers in “general”, and
- only posting text and images that didn’t give away the result of a bout.
Does that seem fair to you? Maybe we could ask @rnercle@sh.itjust.works to hide the text of their post behind a “spoiler” tag.
Yeah I think that would be a good community rule. And I appreciate you considering it. In this case the image is pretty telling, so a tag on that would have saved me. Maybe just a short timeframe during bashos where anything discussing the current day/days bouts have a tag
I discovered sumo last year halfway through the August Basho and now I’m in it. Sadly as a Canadian I’ve got the time difference so I keep up but can be a day or 2 behind. I also haven’t found anyone to chat with except my other half so would love to see this community thrive.
I honestly don’t think this image is telling. There’s a reason many fans consider the outcome controversial or at least worthy of mono-ii.
And while I understand your perspective about not wanting spoilers, I would prefer no such rules. The communities here are small, and a no spoiler rule basically stops any specific discussion apart from in the day topics.
And I’m not hear to tell anyone how this sub is run, only that if there are spoilers, I will have to block it, which would suck for me too. I can see why people wouldn’t want them.
And the image shows the final few milliseconds of the match, so it seems pretty spoilery to me…
Fair enough, obviously I will follow whatever rules are in place. I just want to also offer the viewpoint that a ban on spoilers is self evident.
When seeing it live I personally believed aonishki had won exactly because of that image, he snapped Onosato down while jumping.
Just came back seconds after watching the match to see the actually conversation. That looked very cut and dried an Aonishki victory…
The way I formulated it in the “how to watch” post is (slightly edited):
- if you make a POST, please make sure the image does not show the result of a match that happened the previous 1-2 days. Likewise with text.
- if you make a COMMENT it is OK to discuss results up to the day of the post. so if the post is about day 13, please don’t talk about day 15 even if it’s already happened.
We might need a moderator tho. I’ll make a post on Monday asking for volunteers. You’re welcome to be one!
btw I’m glad you’re here, but if you want more people to chat with, I always had fun on twitch. for example https://www.twitch.tv/midnightsumo does replays that hit Makuuchi sometime in late afternoon US/CA time.
Thanks for the tip!
And I’ve never modded anything before, but I’ve been on this here internet long enough I could probably figure it out.
