“I have high self-esteem and believe I can do anything,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “I’m big, but I feel like I have a talent for this.” Mr Gneiting, who is originally from Idaho, is 6ft tall and has a 5ft waist. He is a three-time American sumo champion and has represented the US at the world championships.

He said that his size made running uncomfortable. “It’s hard on my feet, my thighs and under my armpits,” he said. He plans to wear slick black Lycra leggings to prevent friction.

The Telegraph (UK) notes that Gneiting weighs 29 stone, which converts to about 184 kilograms. Oh, those Europeans and their odd measurement systems!

Link | Photo: Getty

It doesn’t get much more random than this, Neatoramanauts! College Humor presents: a chameleon eating a cricket off a sumo wrestler’s face, captured in super slo-mo goodness.

Hit play or go to Link [College Humor] – Thanks Sparks! ]]> http://www.neatorama.com/2010/07/23/chameleon-eating-a-bug-off-a-sumo-wrestlers-face/feed/ 5 http://www.neatorama.com/2010/05/10/the-baby-crying-festival-2/ http://www.neatorama.com/2010/05/10/the-baby-crying-festival-2/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 13:20:34 +0000 John Farrier http://www.neatorama.com/2010/05/10/the-baby-crying-festival-2/

Oddity Central reports that the Sensoji Temple in Tokyo, Japan, has held an annual festival for the past four hundred years that encourages babies to cry in order to improve their health:

Amateur sumo wrestlers hold the babies high in the air, and try to scare them into crying, while a sumo referee judges the match. The toddler who cries longest and loudest is considered the winner.

Japanese parents bring the babies to the contest, of their own free will, and truly believe the sumo induced crying keeps their children in good health, and wards off evil spirits. This year, 80 babies, all under one year old, participated in Naki Sumo. As you might have guessed, the whiniest contender won.

Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Zing.vn | Video

A food bank fundraiser at Queen’s College in Canada was canceled when the hosting organization, the Alma Mater Society, received a complaint:

They “appropriate an aspect of Japanese culture,” turn a racial identity into a “costume,” and “devalue an ancient and respected Japanese sport, which is rich in history and cultural tradition.” They also “fail to capture the deeply embedded histories of violent and subversive oppression that a group has faced.”

The Alma Mater Society on Monday published a two-page apology letter, and cancelled a foodbank fundraiser scheduled for Tuesday, which was to feature two sumo suits. The letter scolds the student government’s own executive for “marginalizing members of the Queen’s community” and failing to “critically consider the racist meaning behind [the fundraiser.]“

Link — Thanks, Jeremy Barker! | Photo: (unrelated) flickr user jasonippolito, used under Creative Commons license | Previously on Neatorama: Sumo Suit Athletics World Championships

The American TV musical show Glee was just released in Japan. This video is a commercial for it, featuring the Hawaiian-born sumo wrestler Akebono Taro singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

via Topless Robot

How about with a sumo suit? The people behind the Sumo Suit Athletics World Championships (motto: "slower, lower, weaker!") aim to liberate these events from elitist pro athletes so the (flabby) masses can join in on the fun!

Can’t compete with Usain Bolt over 100m? Not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Well have no fear, in a Sumo Suit no one can!

Indeed! TYWKIWDBI has the video clip: Link

After a string of bad behaviors including a brawl in a communal bath, being drunk in public and so on, the sumo champ is being accused of … being "podgy"!

Sumo bad boy Asashoryu, no stranger to public criticism, has been labelled "podgy" in a bizarre attack on the volatile Mongolian.

A popular former wrestler now working as a TV commentator accused Asashoryu of being flabby, even though his 150-kilogram frame is relatively small for the sport.

"He looks podgy," Shuhei Mainoumi told Japanese media. "He doesn’t look as buff. When I got flabby I hated being naked and showing off my body — he looks a bit like that."

Um, maybe this is my naiveté but I thought being podgy is the whole point of sumo wrestling? Link

Here’s a neat article by Tania Kadokura of Saveur magazine about chanko-nabe, a hearty, protein-rich one-pot meal that has been the staple of sumo warriors for over a century:

Today’s wrestlers train and live at heya (stables) run by former sumo champions, where everything from their grooming to their diet is carefully controlled. Because strength and size are factors key to success in sumo, what and how much a wrestler eats are of particular importance. No wonder, then, that the staple dish of the sumo world is a hearty, filling one-pot meal, consisting of broth, vegetables, and meat or seafood, called nabemono, or nabe for short. (Nabe, pronounced nah-bay, means pot; nabemono means things in a pot.) The dish likely dates to the Jomons, who inhabited Japan a dozen millennia ago. The inventors of pottery, they were apparently the first people to cook food in pots.

When nabe is prepared by sumo wrestlers, it’s called chanko-nabe, a name whose origin is unclear – although since chan means father and ko means child, some believe the term refers to a stable , master and his apprentices. The tradition of sumo wrestlers’ eating nabe supposedly began in the early 1900s, when star wrestler ~ turned stable master Hitachiyama ~ (sumo wrestlers traditionally go by a single ring name) made a batch for his charges one day. He quickly realized that the meal ~ usually cooked over a gas burner set on the table with diners gathered around-was not only nutritious and inexpensive but also easy to prepare and eaten in a way that reinforced the communal aspect of the stable. It wasn’t long before other stable masters were serving chanko-nabe, too.

Link – via grow-a-brain

(Photo: Christopher Hirsheimer)