LONDON — London’s Royal Albert Corridor, the gilded live performance venue identified for an annual “Rule Britannia” singalong, is making ready to host a distinct type of spectacle: Sumo wrestling.
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Digicam shutters clicked furiously and reporters “ahhhed” in delight Wednesday as wrestlers Daisuke Kitanowaka and Akira Fukutsuumi demonstrated a sideways stamp and placed on an exhibition of heavyweight grappling to advertise a match scheduled for subsequent October.
It marks solely the second time an elite five-day match shall be held exterior Japan. The primary was in 1991 on the similar venue.
Organizers are hoping to whip up the type of pleasure that was generated three many years in the past, when the deeply ritualistic sport attracted sell-out crowds and a nationwide tv viewers.
“It wasn’t just an event here at the hall,’’ said James Ainscough, chief executive of the Royal Albert Hall. “It became a national moment. People talked about it in the workplace. You could see kids acting it out each day in playgrounds the length and breadth of the country. So it’s a huge honor and a huge matter of excitement to welcome it back in 2025.’’
A variety of factors, including a series of sumo wrestling scandals, the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the sport’s return to London. But organizers believe the time is right because sumo is having a bit of a moment.
Two Netflix series have introduced audiences to the intricacies of the sport, which has roots stretching back 1,500 years. Earlier this year, Hanshin Contents Link opened a sumo hall in Osaka, Japan’s third-largest city, that entertains foreign tourists with explanatory exhibitions and actual bouts.
Organizers of the London event say they hope to show Japan’s rich culture as well as its traditional sport that pits two huge men clad in very little against each other in a test of strength and technique.
On hand Wednesday was the winner of the previous U.K. tournament, Nobuyoshi Hakkaku, nicknamed “bulldog’’ by British fans in 1991. Now the chairman of the Japan Sumo Association, he reminisced about how the only thing that made him really nervous was preparing for a victory speech in English.
Japan’s ambassador to the U.K., Hiroshi Suzuki, also made an appearance, a reflection of the event’s importance to the nation. Organizers promised that spectators also would see exhibitions of Kabuki theater and other Japanese traditions.
But the main attraction were the wrestlers.
Kitanowaka and Fukutsuumi gamely tried to show off their sport. Clad in their mawashi, or ceremonial aprons, they faced off on a mat in front of several dozen journalists. The big men slammed into each other with an “oomph” as flesh slapped flesh. A grunt or two broke the silence.
No sweat was evident. It was over in a flash.
Then they went exterior, dropping their robes and exposing their flesh to the frosty November air as they entered and exited a traditional London black cab for photographers.
Nothing appeared to hassle them. Not the chilly. Not the calls for to face this fashion or that. Because the live performance corridor loomed behind them, they did their finest to be sumo diplomats.
“Sumo has a splendidly intriguing assortment of tradition and ritual and sport and pleasure,’’ Ainscough stated. “And to carry sumo again to the Royal Albert Corridor once more doesn’t simply create a sporting second, it creates a second the place we will be taught and be impressed by one other tradition and one other set of ideas to stay by. It’s a second the place we will all develop nearer collectively.’”