When Saleva'a Atisanoe cut school with some University High friends in 1982, little could he have imagined that while he might have skipped out on the class, instead of escaping history, he was on his way to making it.

If not for a stroll along Waikiki Beach and the chance encounter it produced, he might never have become a man who bulldozed barriers in the sumo world or achieved celebrity in two countries with a 15-year professional ring career.

"We cut class that day to go to Waikiki and we ran into (former pro wrestler) Curtis Iaukea, who spoke with Sale about sumo," recalled long-time friend, pastor Joe Onosai.

Iaukea, known as "Da Bull" in his professional wrestling days, took note of the 6-foot-1, 350-pound football player from Nanakuli with the confident gait and asked him two questions: "Do you know about sumo?" and "Do you want to go to Japan?"

"He (Iaukea) thought Sale could make it in sumo and he knew Jesse (Kuhaulua, a prominent sumotori from Maui)," Onosai said.

SPEEDING UP RANKS

The sumo offer was a shocker for Atisanoe who has said he, "was really looking to (college). I wasn't thinking much about sports. I wanted to get an education, yet I knew it would be a struggle. Financially, it would be hard."

So, soon after high school graduation Atisanoe was on his way to Tokyo. It was a sign of how his potential was viewed that Atisanoe was given the ring name of Yasokichi Konishiki, the 17th (1867-1914) and youngest sumotori, to that point, to gain promotion to yokozuna.

No foreign-born sumotori had achieved the exalted rank in the centuries-old sport, but Atisanoe was soon seen as the man who would collide with convention. With his growing size, power and quick-study aptitude, he shot up the rankings with bullet train-like speed.

Indeed, an opponent once likened a bout with Atisanoe to being hit by a train. "There's a big whoosh, then you feel the contact and it stuns you," the foe said.

Atisanoe won the championship of the first two junior divisions for which he qualified. He went 32-3 in his first year and, at 462 pounds, set the mark for the heaviest sumotori.

In a dizzying two years and three months, he was knocking on the top division — and sumo purists were sweating. "Konishki Shock" the headlines blared. Xenophobic voices said it would be a national "shame" if a foreigner ever reached yokozuna. "Foreign Yokozuna Not Needed" a weekly magazine wrote. Dolls in his image were reportedly stuck with pins at a shrine.

ACCESS DENIED

Atisanoe came to be called the "Black Ship" in reference to the ships that Commodore Matthew Perry used to help force open Japan's isolationist doors to trade in the 1850s.

So much of his career came to be tied to yokozuna that when Atisanoe offered a marriage proposal, he reportedly said, "let's work together towards yokozuna."

Atisanoe seemed to be on the verge of achieving yokozuna when, as an ozeki, he won the Kyushu Basho in November of 1991 and the Haru Basho in March of 1992. In a three-tournament stretch, he went 38-7.

Sumo policy specified that to earn promotion to yokozuna two consecutive tournament titles or an equivalent record was required. But because he didn't win consecutive titles (he was 12-3 in the intervening Hatsu Basho of January 1992) he was passed over. Sumo officials also cited questions about requisite "hinkaku" — or dignity — for the position.

TOOK A POUNDING

But many saw the rejection more about the tradition-bound sport's stubborn refusal to promote a foreigner. Atisanoe lashed out, being quoted as saying, "If I was Japanese I would have been there already."

Such comments, coming as they did during a period of trade tensions between Japan and the United States, caused a firestorm that went all the way to the highest levels of Japan's government. Atisanoe eventually was compelled to call a press conference during which he said some comments had been "misinterpreted."

In Japan, where a popular saying has it that "the nail that sticks up gets pounded down," Atisanoe took a pounding. The stress of the situation stayed with him, taking a toll on his performance and he never got that close to promotion again.

"Chad (Rowan) and Fia (Penitani) threw me a birthday party on Dec. 31 (1992) and when the clock hit 12:01 a.m., I told myself that all that stuff (from 1992) was behind me for good," Atisanoe said later. But it wasn't.

GRAND OPENING

Instead the controversy meant that when Rowan, a Hawai'i sumotori who competed as Akebono, went 14-1 and 13-2, winning the final tournament of 1992 and the opening one of 1993, he was deemed qualified for promotion.

"The way I look at it," Atisanoe said after Akebono's historic promotion, "it is that Jesse (Kuhaulua) opened the door for foreigners to come into sumo and, maybe, I helped open it a little for Chad."

Atisanoe said, "it took me a while before I could handle the disappointment of not being promoted. It was the kind of thing that you get over little by little but a piece of it lingers in the back of your mind for a long time."

The burden of more than 500 pounds on an aging frame forced retirement in 1997 but not until, in his persistence and tenacity in the face of disappointment and injury, he'd come to win a spot in the hearts of the public in Japan. Even among those who once rooted against him.

Atisanoe joined the ruling sumo association for a short time but eventually began a highly successful career as a singer, entertainer and TV personality.

He is still held in such high regard in Japan that Hawai'i tourism groups and companies build promotional campaigns around him. "You knew, even as a kid, he was going to be successful, what ever he put his mind to," Onosai said.

COMMUNITY-MINDED

In between travels, Atisanoe lives in a 10,000-square-foot home near Ma'ili Beach Park. Still, friends say, he remains much the same person they remember. "He's the same old Sale," said Alice Takata, who has known him since he played football with her son, Matt, at Pac-Five. "He's grateful for the people who helped him and does things for the community."

He has operated Konishiki's Kids, a charitable foundation that takes groups of Leeward Coast youngsters to Japan for cultural exchanges, for a decade.

One thing that has dramatically changed of late, however, is his weight. With the help of surgery, friends say, he has gone from 600-plus pounds to under 400 for the first time in 26 years. His goal, they say, is to reach 280.

But he remains a larger-than-life figure in Hawai'i sports history.