16 OctOber 17 - 23, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents The Ringleaders North Texas wrestlers unite to fight with the Dallas Sumo Club. By Simon Pruitt 時間です、実践してください it’s time, put hands down A t the beginning of a sumo match, a referee announces this to the two competitors, before they crouch opposite each other and touch both their fists to the mat. The sumo match does not begin until all four fists are down. Corey Morrison learned this while toiling away at what he describes as a “boring govern- ment job” in 2020. Surfing YouTube for an es- cape from virtual city council meetings, he stumbled upon The Way of The Wolf, a 1991 documentary about Chiyonofuji Mitsugu, a Japanese sumo wrestler who became popular for his energetic style of wrestling. In sumo, two wrestlers step into a dohyo, a slightly elevated ring with a 4.55-meter circle made of rice straw bales. When a ref- eree calls for the match to begin, the oppo- nents charge at each other and wrestle upright until one is forced out of the ring, or a part of their body other than the soles of their feet touches the ground inside the ring. Mitsugu won 1,045 times in his illustri- ous professional career, a record number at the time of his retirement in 1991. He was considered small by sumo standards, stand- ing at 6 feet tall and weighing about 270 lbs. The New York Times labeled him “Little big man of sumo.” “He kind of broke my Western brain that thought of sumo wrestlers as fat guys in dia- pers,” Morrison, 35, says. “He was hand- some and looked like the Japanese Arnold Schwarzenegger. With that documentary, I was just immediately sucked in.” Drawn to Mitsugu, Morrison researched the professional sumo circuits in Japan. The Japan Sumo Association is the leading gov- erning body for professional sumo, ap- proaching its 100-year anniversary after being founded in 1925. Morrison dug through the internet to find underground Twitch live streams of the league’s monthly tournaments. Japan Standard Time is 15 hours ahead of Central Standard Time, so watch- ing matches live required a major commitment. As soon as Morrison knew he was go- ing to be making the film, he in- volved his girl- friend of nine years, Siggy Sauer. “I was all in,” she says. “We started staying up till 4 in the morning so we could avoid spoilers online.” Morrison and Sauer’s obses- sion became mutual. Their four fists were down. Before this they never watched sports. Morrison played baseball and lacrosse in high school but came to be turned off by the trash-talking bravado of modern sports cul- ture, and he focused on photography and filmmaking as an adult. With sumo, Japa- nese culture heavily imposes a nature of re- spect and tradition that eliminates the brashness of combat sports. “That’s one of the huge things that at- tracted us,” Morrison says. “It is very different from other combat sports or just sports in gen- eral. The community is really tight, there’s not a lot of shit-talk- ing during matches and stuff.” The couple took their new- found obsession to their respec- tive social media, posting clips and reactions to pro- fessional matches as they happened. They received a mes- sage from Justin Kizzart, who runs Dark Circle Sumo in Austin, inviting them to drive down to his space and participate in a full sumo practice. Upon arrival, Sauer opted to watch from the sidelines as Morrison suited up for the first time. “I went up there and they beat me up so bad, broke my ribs and made me throw up,” Morrison says. “I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna watch too. I don’t want to do this at all.’” 立合い tachiai/ stand and meet I n a sumo match, the two wrestlers have “tachiai,” which is the first collision of their bodies to open a bout. Wrestlers are told to embrace the tachiai despite its brutality, as it’s the first and usually the most impactful way to move your opponent. One bite from the apple wouldn’t be enough though, as Kizzart invited the cou- ple to see a tournament that Dark Circle Sumo planned to host and informed them that there was an untapped market for sumo in Dallas. Kizzart offered to help them launch a makeshift club and show them how to run a practice. After studying the practices up close, Morrison launched the Dallas Sumo Club in January 2021, sending cold emails to wres- tlers and Dallasites who might be interested in sumo. Thirteen people showed up for the first practice before Morrison took to the streets to invite more people in. After a semi-regular group started to build, Morrison would book them to present live sumo demonstrations at anime ▼ Culture Jason Janik >> p18 Two sumo wrestlers prepare to fight in a dohyo, a slightly elevated ring, at a Dallas Sumo Club event. Jason Janik Corey Morrison launched Dallas Sumo Club in 2021.
