Sumo R.I.P.

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the last Japanese yokozuna reigned and the years of the slow, irrecoverable decline into irrelevance of this ancient and noble martial sport, there was an age undreamed of, when gleaming behemoths clashed across the land like shining gods beneath the stars - Kaio, Kotomitsuki, the iceman Hakuho with his steely grace, sad-eyed Bulgarian Kotooshu, Harumafuji with his supreme craft, the giant Baruto with incomparable strength. Matching their skill and power against each other in the eternal quest for greatness and immortality. But the proudest warrior of all was Asashoryu, reigning supreme from the dreaming steppes of the west. From the land over the sea he came, the Mongolian, black-topknotted, fire-eyed, mawashi-clad, sword in hand, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic girth, to tread the sacred clay of the dohyo under his bare feet."

We shall remember him.