Before Akebono, no foreigner had ever been promoted to the highest rank in sumo, yokozuna. There was a Hawaiian, Konishiki, who preceded Akebono who made it to ozeki (second highest rank) but then said in an interview with a Hawaiian newspaper that if he was Japanese, he'd be a yokozuna by now. That was the nail in the coffin for him but when Akebono came along, the Sumo Association made a point by promoting him, to 'prove' Konishiki wrong. This then opened the floodgates. The last three yokozuna have all been Mongolian. Mongolians have been dominating top division sumo over the past decade but there's several young native Japanese wrestlers who are also emerging now. There's also a Russian and a Kazakh in the top division and a Bulgarian and a Georgian recently retired.
