By day, Kofi Miller teaches strategy at a school in the Bronx. <\/p>\n
“What I like about teaching the most is just the opportunity to be a influence in a child’s life, especially as someone who grew up here in Brooklyn…teachers are kind of what saved me from the streets and everything,” he says. <\/p>\n
But by night, Miller has another passion – stepping into the ring for one of the world’s oldest sports.<\/p>\n
Miller trains sumo in New York, where he’s helping grow the sport and draw new crowds. <\/p>\n
“I do feel kind of like a superhero,” he says. <\/p>\n
The sport is starting to draw some pretty big crowds across the tri-state.<\/p>\n
“We are getting the exposure that i think sumo deserves,” he says. “I think it has the possibility to change the aspect of sports in the U.S. in a major way.”<\/p>\n
Miller’s sumo journey started almost by accident. He said he was working at a bar and his boss showed him a flyer about a sumo tournament and said he wanted him to see him do sumo moves as a joke. <\/p>\n
But what started out as a joke didn’t end up as one. The more Miller trained, the more the sport felt like a fit.<\/p>\n
“The thing that attracted me to sumo is the spirit of dedication,” he says. “It’s so New York to me to fight with everything you have, so I just love sumo. <\/p>\n
Competition is nothing new for Miller. Before he trained in sumo, the kid who grew up loving video games suddenly found himself playing them for a living – and just like in gaming, he made himself a name in sumo. <\/p>\n
“My parents – if they could see the headlines and the posters and everything now, I know they would be proud of me,” he said. “They always said I had the potential to do something great.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, his parents never got to see him step in the ring because they passed away in recent years. <\/p>\n
Training is only part of the job. To compete at more than 350 pounds, eating becomes part of the work. <\/p>\n
“Keeping on weight like that is, of course, going to be a lot of food,” he says. <\/p>\n
But sometimes even getting dressed is a challenge – because when you are built for sumo, you usually need a tailor. <\/p>\n
But all the hard work – and eating – leads to a competition. <\/p>\n
He recently competed at a tournament at the Westchester County Center, but while he lost, he remains positive and thinking about the next match. <\/p>\n
“I can only see my sumo journey going up from here. Losing is just a chance to get better,” he says. “I want to be considered the greatest of all times – that’s my goal. And that means winning, that means fighting and that means conquering. I’m still the New York sumo wrestler. I just gotta get up back on my feet.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By day, Kofi Miller teaches strategy at a school in the Bronx. “What I like about teaching the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-191641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}