Day 2 of the July sumo tournament in Japan finished a couple of hours ago! The tourney lasts for 15 days, so this is a great time to start watching!
Live / Replay:
- try searching on twitch, there are usually at least 3 different streamers providing live video feeds with English commentary, and it’s fun to have a community to chat with in real time. The top Makuuchi matches start around 3am US Eastern Time though. At least one of the streamers does replays all day, usually of the entire day (including lower ranks).
Video Clips:
-
youtuber DonDon makes a daily video of the “best 10” matches listed in English with replays including on-screen English analysis (posted around 6am EST): https://www.youtube.com/@dondonsumo2/videos Besides the “best 10” of the top Makuuchi tier, DonDon also makes a “best 5” of the second Juryo tier.
-
Broadcaster NHK makes a daily video that has all the top-tier Makuuchi bouts with English spoken commentary: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/sumo/ and here: https://www.youtube.com/@NHKWORLDJAPAN/videos These are usually delayed by a day, but are a great intro.
-
NHK immediately posts individual videos of each top-tier bout listed in Japanese with Japanese commentary.
click here for instructions to see the NHK Japanese videos
They are re-doing their Japanese website. I THINK that to see the latest videos on the NHK site in Japanese, you look here: https://www.nhk.jp/g/ts/Z8WRRJ9K96/blog/bl/pm1VNbJpWQ/bp/pExrRxao2y/ and click on the topmost link that says “NHK ONE”, it should look like this:
Click “I understand” to acknowledge that you’re not in Japan (lel) and then scroll down til you see this button:
it might look like this:
click on that and you should see all the videos?!
For the listings in Japanese, try automated translations if there’s a lot of text. Alternately, look for something like: 9月14日 which in this case refers to the 9th month and the 14th day (September 14th). Automated translation doesn’t work that well on sumotori names, but this is a great opportunity to learn them by sight! (The JSA web site has pictures of them all.)
- JSA immediately posts individual videos of each of the highest-ranked 10+ matches listed in Japanese with no commentary, here: https://www.youtube.com/@sumo-video/videos
Additional fan youtube channels (I haven’t checked them out too thoroughly)
- https://www.youtube.com/@sumo-highlights
- https://www.youtube.com/@TheMawashiShow/videos
- https://www.youtube.com/@sumowithherbert
- https://www.youtube.com/@SumoFiles
- https://www.youtube.com/@LionSumo
- https://www.youtube.com/@Sumotop/videos
- https://www.youtube.com/@Wakanoho-8/videos
- https://www.youtube.com/@DarkCircleSumo/streams
Text Info in English:
-
all results and standings and next-day schedule by sumodb
-
more results and stats from sumostats, another fan site
-
results and more info from the JSA
-
daily writeups by The Mainichi (Mainichi Shimbun newspaper)
-
occasional articles by The Japan News (Yomiuru Shimbun newspaper)
-
for commentary, see the tachiai fan site
Intro to Sumo
-
more English-language intro videos at NHK’s Sumopedia
-
the wikipedia article has a lot of great information including on sumo terms.
“What are you waiting for? Go watch SUMO!!!”
I’ve been watching the Sumo Highlights channel to watch the March tournament and tuned in yesterday to check out the current Day 1 matches.
The new stats/graphics they have are so cool! Really helpful to a noob like me to know what to expect, and I love the slo-mo recaps after the fights with being able to see things highlighted and terms spelled out on screen.
I can’t wait to see all the great action now that I understand things a little better.
Oh yeah that’s from https://www.youtube.com/@sumo-highlights right? I love that Radar Chart visualization and the win probability with ELO rating. I’m not sure who’s making those videos, so I suspect that channel’s gonna be taken down or move eventually, if it’s not authorized.
Yeah, that’s the one. It was much simpler in the March videos:
When I saw the new overlay yesterday, I was both thrilled, but also a little concerned it looked too good now and might draw too much attention. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts at least!