Yokozuna performance

[jpierce@chem.UCSD.EDU (John Pierce)]

I certainly wish Musoyama well, but one needs to be a little careful with
statements like Renee Heinbaugh's "... about to become the greatest yokozuna
in the postwar era...."  Besides his active opponents, he has three rather
large historical mountains to climb:  Taiho, Kitanoumi, and Chiyonofuji.  A
blank space indicates a number I don't know; however, it will be less than
the number(s) shown for the other yokozuna.

				Taiho		Kitanoumi	Chiyonofuji

Total Makunouchi yusho		32		24		31
Consecutive yusho		6 (twice)	5		5
Consecutive zensho yusho	2 (twice)	 		2 (twice)
Makunouchi bouts won in a year	81		82		80
Makunouchi record win-loss-pct	746-146-83.6	804-248-76.42	807-253-76.1
Consecutive bouts won		 		 		53
Winning percentage as yokozuna	83.8		84.9
Period as yokozuna		9/61 - 5/71	7/74 - 1/85	7/81 - 5/91

There are a number of other more-or-less significant records held by these
three (e.g., Kitanoumi fought 653 consecutive bouts as yokozuna, Chiyonofuji
holds the record for consecutive yusho for the same basho - 8 at Kyushu) but
those above seem to be the salient ones.

Taiho seems generally to be considered the best of the three, and it is
apparently customary to somewhhat downplay Chiyonofugi's accomplishments
by saying that he faced lesser opposition than the other two.  I can't
really judge either of those statements, as Taiho is the only one I saw
for myself.  I can say that none of the current rikishi impress me in the
way I *remember* being impressed by Taiho; only Akebono at his best and
most confident-seeming comes close.

It seems to me the real question here is not one of "greatest yokozuna in
the postwar era".  Rather, I think the question is this:

    Is it *realistically* possible for someone to again be as dominant in
    sumo as were those three?

I'm interested in the opinions of others on that question.  If such
dominance is not possible, then the "greatest yokozuna" question is
probably moot:  I see no hope of answering it.

-- John W Pierce, Chem/Biochem, UC San Diego
   jpierce@ucsd.edu