Akebono RIP

[Carbomb]

Egg posted this in the MMA forum. wand reminded us he'd had a career in wrestling, including having a match at WrestleMania, so I think it's worth bringing this to the wider forum.

He's particularly notable for being one of the few sumo whose profile extended to outside the sport and into the mainstream/casual consciousness, to a certain degree, while still being in the sport, rather than the usual route of only becoming well-known after he'd retired from it.

Being booked for a WM match certainly would be testament to his popularity, and I daresay even more people ended up knowing about him afterwards too.

RIP.

7 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

Just seen Akebono has passed away.

I know Akebono was as far as I can tell about as legit a Sumo Wrestler as you can get, but it's his foray into the MMA/K-1 game I know him from.

Always have fond memories of watching the big man fight because he came in at the height of the Japanese freakshow/crossover scene and its something that always fascinated me. Mixed feelings though, there was element of sadness and exploitation to the whole thing with Akebono, he was clearly out of his depth and ending up fighting some of the best kickboxers in the fight. He ended up with a complete fight record of 1-14. Sure I remember scenes of his wife and kids being filmed front row whilst he was getting battered too.

RIP Akebono, you had a go.

 

8 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Yeah, I was more familiar with his stints in MMA and K-1 than his Sumo career. Definitely agree with Egg that there did seem to be an element of exploitation to it where they’d routinely roll him out there in fights they knew he had pretty much no hope in. But that was the way they did things over there at the time. I’ll never forget Yuji Nagata basically being used as a human sacrifice and getting fed to Cro Cop and Fedor in his first 2 (and last 2) MMA fights. 

Akebono had quite a mad career when you think about it though. Huge success in Sumo obviously but even beyond that, he fought the likes of Royce Gracie and Don Frye in MMA, he fought in K-1, he competed at a WrestleMania, he wrestled Brock Lesnar in Japan etc. That led me to look up more of Akebono’s pro wrestling section on his Wikipedia page and he did more than I thought in wrestling. He wrestled everywhere from All Japan to New Japan to NOAH to Hustle to Dragon Gate. 

Edited April 11 by Carbomb

[air_raid]

34 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Hustle

This absolutely should not be glossed over, for one of the maddest bits of wrestling ever. Great Muta spat his mist into the pussy of Yinling The Erotic Terrorist, who fell pregnant from it. She ended up laying an egg. When that egg hatched, Akebono came out. With a dummy.

.... RIP.

[Merzbow]

He also had two(?) post-FMW deathmatches with Atsushi Onita in '12 and '13, both pretty fucking awful even by way past his prime Onita standards but they're worth a watch just for the insane spectacle of them.

He's had an insane career overall, someone I wouldn't be ashamed to have in my boy stable. RIP big lad.

[wandshogun09]

Akebono and Sakuraba. Sakubono. 

[air_raid]

2 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

Akebono and Sakuraba. Sakubono. 

Or Akeburaba. Which is so close to Akihabara, it makes me smile.

[Dean Ayass]

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.

[Tamura]

5 minutes ago, Dean Ayass said:

There's also a Russian and a Kazakh in the top division and a Bulgarian and a Georgian recently retired.

The Bulgarian, Aoiyama, isn't retired although I was pretty sure he would. He finished the January basho with a 0–7–8 record after injuring his ACL resulting in him dropping down to the jūryō division. As he's now 37 I figured that would probably be it for him especially if the injury kept him out for any extended period (absence = demotion in the rankings), but he was back in the March basho and ended up with a 7-8 record. I can't imagine him carrying on too much longer though, especially if he drops out of jūryō as that means a significant salary cut and loss of his servants.

[gmoney]

11 minutes ago, Tamura said:

The Bulgarian, Aoiyama, isn't retired although I was pretty sure he would. 

I've just googled him, and blimey he's got a lovely pair of busters. 

[air_raid]

6 hours ago, gmoney said:

I've just googled him, and blimey he's got a lovely pair of busters. 

Fond memories of the “Submission Sorority” debacle. Of course, these days they give the talent names like Kayden Carter and Lola Vice - it’s almost like they WANT to misdirect us to Brazzers.