Word: akebono
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...night rice binges, clingy loincloths, a positively feudalistic promotion system--it's easy to see how sumo wrestling could get to be a grind. But when AKEBONO, the first foreign-born wrestler to achieve sumo's highest rank, retired from the ring in 2001, it was huge news. The 517-lb. Hawaiian, born Chad Rowan, brought glitter and cosmopolitanism to the ancient and solemn Japanese sport. Now Akebono, 34, is stunning the sumo world again with the announcement that he'll join Japan's brutal K-1 kickboxing league--a career move tantamount to Mikhail Baryshnikov's joining WWE SmackDown...
...bluest of sumo blood (both his father and his uncle were high-level wrestlers), but it was his superstar celebrity outside the ring?the magazine covers, the celebrated love affairs, the lurid tabloid details?that humanized the highly traditional sport. "He gave sumo a facelift, a new image," says Akebono, a yokozuna from 1993 to 2001. Sumo wrestlers were just like normal people, he proved, give or take a hundred kilos...
...Losers ANNA KOURNIKOVA L'oeuf bug! A cybervirus as lethal as its Philippine cousin travels under the leggy tennis star's name TINTIN Zut alors! A bawdy spoof sends the francophone toon traveler on a salacious trip to Thailand AKEBONO First foreign sumo champ crashes motorcycle, then apologizes. To the bike? Verbatim...
...SATURDAY The opening ceremonies will have 2,450 athletes from 72 nations and much tradition. Sumo grand champion Akebono will perform an ancient purification ritual...
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