At age 54, Sumo star Taro Akebono, who spearheaded the sport’s resurgence and won its first international grand prix, passed away from heart failure.
The Hawaiian-born fighter passed away earlier this month in a Tokyo doctor, his family announced in a speech.
The 210 kg, 2m tall ( 462lb, 6ft 6in ), giant was a towering figure in the sport, both literally and metaphorically. His distinctive fighting style frequently saw him force his opponents out of the ring.
Sports images and various sumo wrestlers paid gift to him as a pioneer who had blazed a trail for another foreign athletes on both sides of the Pacific.
According to local media, Akebono had been suffering from sickness since collapsing in the town of Kitakyushu seven years ago.
He was born Chad Rowan in 1969, raised in Honolulu’s Koolau mountains, and moved to Japan in 1988 to follow his wrestling job.
Within six decades, he had become Japan’s 64th yokozuna, or great champion, an honor that the weightlifting council had formerly declared off-limits to non-Japanese athletes.
His dedication to the game earned him the value of his hometown fans as well as breaking barriers.
” He makes me forget he is a tourist because of his honest attitude toward sumo”, the director of Sumo Magazine, Yoshihisa Shimoie, said in 1993.
He won 11 more final names before retiring in his profession, drawing in millions of viewers from all over the world.
In a time when the game was struggling for importance, his well-known conflict with Takanohana Koji and Masaru Hanada is widely credited with bringing new life to it.
In 1996 he became a naturalised Chinese citizen, taking the name Taro Akebono. Over 11, 000 spectators watched his departure from weightlifting wrestling when he retired in 2001 from the sport because 320 of his friends and former competitors had cut off his topknot slowly.
” I feel terrible, much more than I had expected. I feel my mind is lighter. I think it is not the fat off my hair but the fat off my responsibility”, he said at the moment.
As monuments poured in on Thursday, some of the biggest brands in the game honoured him for his strength, humility, and compassion.
” It was all so unexpected, and I may come up with words to give him. He was a man full of love”, Hanada wrote on X, originally Online.
Rahm Emanuel, the US embassy to Japan, praised Akebono for fostering historical ties between the two nations and serving as a “bridge between the United States and Japan.”
Past sports journalist Neil Everett attributed him with carrying the weight of the entire position on his arms while representing Hawaii in Japan.
Christine Rowan, Akebono’s wife, their daughter, and their two children remain.
Shaimaa Khalil and Chie Kobayashi provided further monitoring in Tokyo.
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1 December 2017
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