Sumo grand champion Hanada tackles a dream
By Foster Klug
Associated Press
PHOENIX — Sumo grand champion Masaru Hanada squats on the edge of a grassy field.
Associated Press photos
Instead of a mawashi, the silk loin cloth worn by sumo wrestlers, he is wearing football pads and a helmet. The ceremonial topknot — or oicho-mage — that attendants coif into the shape of a ginko leaf before sumo matches has been replaced with a buzz-cut.
Masaru Hanada has tapes of his sumo matches to show to NFL scouts.
Hanada, a member of the Arena Football League's Arizona Rattlers, asked a question in Japanese.
"He wants to know if it's legal to grab an opponent's throat," his interpreter tells a group of coaches and trainers.
One of only 67 men in sumo's 1,500 year history to rise through the sport's rigid hierarchy to the rank of Yokozuna (grand champion), Hanada now hopes to live out his dream of playing pro football in the United States. He's trying out for the Rattlers as a defensive lineman.
The 30-year-old Hanada, who won five sumo tournament championships and retired last year with a 426-212 record, is a celebrity in Japan, his smiling face on billboards and bus stops.
Legitimate chance at NFL
In Japan, where sumo is wildly popular, most boys have put on mawashi and wrestled, and nearly everyone there knows the legend that ownership of Japan was determined by a sumo match between two gods.
But throughout his 12-year sumo career, Hanada nurtured a childhood fantasy.
"When I graduated high school at 17, I had a dream to come to America and play pro football," Hanada said. "I've been waiting until now, until I could have a chance to pursue this dream. I want to be able to tell my children that their father is going after his dream."
Hanada wasn't surprised that the Rattlers didn't sign him at the end of a two-day tryout in June. He knows his age and limited knowledge of English and football's rules make him a long shot.
Associated Press
Despite these limitations, Hanada's supporters think the athletic talents that made him one of Japan's greatest sumo wrestlers will one day make him a football player.
In addition to bench-pressing 315 pounds five times, the former grand champion sumo wrestler has a 33-inch vertical leap.
"Listen, this is not a joke," said Warren Anderson, head of a training facility where Hanada is preparing for an upcoming series of tryouts with NFL teams. "This guy's got a legitimate chance."
Hanada left a life of ease and celebrity in Japan to slog through harsh two-a-day workouts in 110-degree desert heat.
"I'm here to learn everything I can about American football," Hanada said. "Things I've only seen before, I'm now actually experiencing with my own body and my own mind."
Hanada has always been comfortable as an underdog. It was the role that made him famous in sumo.
When he wrestled under the name Wakanohana ("Young Flower"), the 6-foot Hanada weighed 288 pounds. Undersized among sumo wrestlers, who average 340 pounds, he used his lower body strength, agility and leverage to routinely maneuver men even twice his size out of the dohyo, or sumo ring.
Built like a typical lineman
At 27, after winning back-to-back tournament championships, he joined his younger brother, Takanohana, as a grand champion.
A tape of Hanada's sumo highlights is being used to market him as an NFL prospect.
He already had some workouts with Arena and NFL teams, most recently with the Atlanta Falcons.
In April, Hanada weighed 245 pounds and knew very little about football. Since then, he has put on 25 pounds and improved his strength and football skills. He has run the 40-yard dash in 4.9 seconds, bench-pressed 315 pounds five times, and has a 33-inch vertical leap.
Jeremy Staat, a nose guard with the Seattle Seahawks, does one-on-one defensive lineman drills with Hanada.
"He's built like a typical NFL nose guard: solid, low to the ground and hard to move from a spot," Staat said. "It's just a matter of taking the skills he has as a sumo wrestler and transferring them to football."
To get his body into football shape, Hanada does NFL combine-style drills every morning.
In the 108-degree heat, Hanada takes his shirt off, showing a stomach-heavy sumo physique that's slowly turning into the body of a defensive lineman, broad through the shoulders, chest and back.
Hanada reaches low for a tennis ball lobbed at his ankles, tosses it back to the trainer and begins his sprint. As he closes in on the other athletes, he high-steps the last 20 yards, his 270 pounds moving with surprising grace.
"If you'd have taken Michael Jordan and put him on a cricket field, you'd have a joke," Anderson said, "but Hanada-san's used his hands to heave 600-pounders around, and there's a pretty good correlation to football."
