SUMO: July 2026 tourney in Japan has just started! (see this post for how to follow it)

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SUMO: July 2026 tourney in Japan has just started! (see this post for how to follow it)

Day 2 of the July sumo tournament in Japan finished a couple of hours ago! The tourney lasts for 15 days, so this is a great time to start watching!

Live / Replay:

  • try searching on twitch, there are usually at least 3 different streamers providing live video feeds with English commentary, and it’s fun to have a community to chat with in real time. The top Makuuchi matches start around 3am US Eastern Time though. At least one of the streamers does replays all day, usually of the entire day (including lower ranks).

Video Clips:

  • youtuber DonDon makes a daily video of the “best 10” matches listed in English with replays including on-screen English analysis (posted around 6am EST): https://www.youtube.com/@dondonsumo2/videos Besides the “best 10” of the top Makuuchi tier, DonDon also makes a “best 5” of the second Juryo tier.

  • Broadcaster NHK makes a daily video that has all the top-tier Makuuchi bouts with English spoken commentary: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/sumo/ and here: https://www.youtube.com/@NHKWORLDJAPAN/videos These are usually delayed by a day, but are a great intro.

  • NHK immediately posts individual videos of each top-tier bout listed in Japanese with Japanese commentary.

click here for instructions to see the NHK Japanese videos

They are re-doing their Japanese website. I THINK that to see the latest videos on the NHK site in Japanese, you look here: https://www.nhk.jp/g/ts/Z8WRRJ9K96/blog/bl/pm1VNbJpWQ/bp/pExrRxao2y/ and click on the topmost link that says “NHK ONE”, it should look like this:

Click “I understand” to acknowledge that you’re not in Japan (lel) and then scroll down til you see this button:

it might look like this:

click on that and you should see all the videos?!

For the listings in Japanese, try automated translations if there’s a lot of text. Alternately, look for something like: 9月14日 which in this case refers to the 9th month and the 14th day (September 14th). Automated translation doesn’t work that well on sumotori names, but this is a great opportunity to learn them by sight! (The JSA web site has pictures of them all.)

Additional fan youtube channels (I haven’t checked them out too thoroughly)

Text Info in English:

Intro to Sumo

“What are you waiting for? Go watch SUMO!!!”

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OP

I didn’t notice it in the first two dondon videos for makuuchi. Maybe it’s youtube playing anti-AI-scraping tricks sporadically? what exactly is wrong with the sound?

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disabling “stable mode”, whatever that is, from settings, fixed it for me.

sound was very … unnatural (?), like the gyōji and the rikishis had microphones on them

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