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Reshaping Sumo

For the World Sumo League 2006 Mega Tour, Big Boy Productions is trying to create an image that will attract fans across the United States.

By DAVID MURPHY
Published June 8, 2006

[Times photo: Melissa Lyttle]

Paul Britt of Tampa, standing, casts a glance at professional sumo wrestlers Hans Borg of Norway, left, and Sidney Carty of the Netherlands, who were using the locker room at the Downtown YMCA in Tampa before a demonstration of the sport for children in an after-school program.

	SUMOSPEAK RishIki: Professional wrestler Mawashi: the thonglike belt wrestlers wear in competition Dohyo: the sumo ring Gyoji: referees

TAMPA

Sidney Carty is an international banker based in Amsterdam. Hans Borg is a nurse in a psychiatric ward in Norway.

Real professionals with serious jobs.

Yet here both men were a few weeks ago, parading through the parking lot of a Sweetbay Supermarket on Gandy Boulevard, wearing tiny loin cloths and not much else.

"Sumo wrestlers!" a gawker yelled, driving by with his foot on the brake. "I'll be damned!"

Carty and Borg - among 24 competitors coming to Tampa Monday as part of the World Sumo League 2006 Mega Tour - are the changing face of the 1,500-year-old sport.

For American audiences, Big Boy Productions of Long Island has stripped away the elements of Far East mysticism and created a touring competition that's more akin to the WWE.

Gone are the solemn faces of the typical rishiki.

In their place are guys like Carty and Borg. Or, as they're known in the ring, "Dr. Love" and "the Psycho Sumo."

The World Sumo League wrestlers don colorful uniforms pre-match, compete in big arenas and display much more emotion than their notoriously stoic Japanese brethren. The action is punctuated by giant taiko drums.

The object of a sumo match is to drive your opponent to the ground or outside an 18-foot ring.

Matches are full of slapping and grappling, and usually end with the resounding thud of flesh on mat.

The World Sumo League guys aren't necessarily as large as the stereotypical Japanese wrestlers.

If Borg (6 foot 4, 340 pounds) and Carty (6 foot 5, 331 pounds) were listed on the Buccaneers roster, neither would be the heaviest. Or the tallest.

Borg, who grew up playing football in his native Norway, has been in sumo eight years. Carty has been wrestling for four and grew up participating in judo.

The two men had similar misgivings when they were first approached about making the transition to sumo wrestling.

The uniform was a big drawback.

"I didn't like the idea of getting naked," Borg said.

They aren't naked. At least not completely.

The mawashi that wraps around a wrestler's waist doesn't do much to cover a sumo's girth or backside.

"I had to get used to it in the beginning," Carty said. "But now that I've been doing it for a few years, I've grown accustomed to it and don't really think about it."

The part-time sumo life doesn't make you rich. Carty said the $10,000 purse offered by the World Sumo League is the largest of any competition he has entered. In tournaments across Europe, rarely is the prize more than a medal and a handshake.

Still, Carty and Borg both say they take their sport seriously. They consider themselves professionals, even if photo opportunities - giant sandwiches at the Carnegie Deli, giant porterhouses at a steak house, huge baskets of pastries at Sweetbay - often make them seem more like caricatures than athletes.

Carty says when he first began wrestling, he was amazed at the effort it required.

"It was quite hard," he said. "I didn't have the technique yet or the skills yet, but I was very impressed by the guys who were doing it. They are top athletes. They are not just big guys doing it. You need to train almost every day."

Whether American audiences will embrace the sport as entertainment is still a question.

A World Sumo League tournament at Madison Square Garden last summer was panned by the suburban New York paper the Journal News, which claimed the event "failed utterly in its effort to convey Japan's no-nonsense national sport to the American stage."

And results from this tour's first stop, in Detroit, are nowhere to be found on the league's Web site.

Still, as Borg and Carty took turns knocking each other off of a bright blue mat during a wrestling demonstration last month in Tampa, both seemed optimistic that their brand of wrestling will catch on in the United States.

"We want it to grow more popular," Carty said.

It should be noted, however, that he isn't quitting his day job.

Times staff writer Jay Cridlin contributed to this report.

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World Sumo League 2006 Mega Tour, 7 p.m. Monday, St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa. $26.75-$101.75. (813) 301-2500, www.stpetetimesforum.com.

[Last modified June 7, 2006, 12:35:44]