there\u2019s a pretty big game on Saturday<\/a>, so let\u2019s start with go Longhorns. And I think Saturday is a perfect way \u2014 I think everybody should watch the Longhorns win, celebrate hard and end Saturday with the Sumo Championship League at the H-E-B Center at eight o\u2019clock.\u00a0<\/p>\nHow did you find your athletes?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Great question. So when we announced, we said that there was a process for people to apply to the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Right now I\u2019m pleased to say we have 58 athletes signed to the league, and they\u2019re from 10 different countries around the world. And we really have chosen the best of the best to be with the league in the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We also heard from a lot of athletes who are not today either experts in sumo or have even trained in sumo, but they\u2019re athletes that have had their day in the sun in other sports, such as football, for example.<\/p>\n
So we have evaluated them as well and have established a training program for athletes to learn sumo, so somewhere down the line, they get a chance to be in the league as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s a lot of athletes to keep track of. I wanted to ask about the No. 1 seed for this weekend, Dominus Davis-Williams, who I believe is from San Antonio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right. I\u2019ve seen Dominus over the last few years compete, and he\u2019s an amazing sumo wrestler.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dominus and others, they\u2019ve been doing this for a while. They train and they are so passionate about their sport. They\u2019re all competitive, but they come at it from a standpoint of really what sumo is all about, which is respect and honor and sportsmanship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They have tremendous respect for all of their competitors whenever they compete. He and all of our 16 competitors in Austin are great people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What do people need to know about sumo before watching an event?\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty simple: Two sumo wrestlers enter the dohyo. The objective is to push or to throw or to whatever you can to get your competitor outside of the dohyo \u2014 outside of ring, as we say.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also, the other way that they win is if any body part other than a competitor\u2019s feet hit the ground. And matches can last anywhere from 10 seconds to several minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s great night out for families because that foundation of sumo is all about honor and the respect and sportsmanship. So there\u2019s nothing objective that a parent would have with bringing their kids to see sumo wrestling.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What would success look like? Is there another sports success story that you would model after or hope to achieve?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, I think that if you look in terms of my background and so forth, I\u2019ve had a wonderful and honored to have spent time at WWE. And you look at UFC and their growth over the years.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to grow the number of shows. I\u2019d to see the awareness of sumo grow as well as a sport. And ultimately, I would like to see the sumo wrestlers themselves become superstars.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new professional sports league is hoping to spur new interest in an ancient practice.\u00a0 The Sumo Championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-461617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}