April 18, 2005
Sumo: Vegas's Newest Gamble

By STEVE FRIESS

Asashoryu, sumo wrestling's reigning champ, is a hotheaded athlete who dominates so completely and disregards traditions so brazenly that he's the fastest-rising star in the Land of the Rising Sun. Few Americans know much about sumo, but promoters figure they'll be drawn to the plotline of a volatile star the public loves to hate when Asashoryu and 40 others of the sport's biggest wrestlers descend on Las Vegas this October for the first professional sumo tournament held on U.S. soil in 20 years.

The Japan Sumo Association, which seldom sends its athletes abroad, accepted the invite from Las Vegas on the occasion of the city's centennial year. (One stipulation: that the athletes travel on two planes so the sport isn't wiped out in the event of a crash.) The Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino is building an authentic dohyo, or ring, and hopes to pack in about 12,000 people per night at $75 a pop and up. Winners in Japan typically take home as much as $100,000; no purse has yet been set for the U.S. competition.

October's three-day event is part of an effort to globalize the appeal of the 1,500-year-old sport, whose best wrestlers now come from outside Japan anyway. Asashoryu, 24, hails from Mongolia and has refused to adopt Japanese citizenship. Those kinds of antics are controversial in Japan; promoters are betting that he'll feel right at home in Vegas.

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