John Tenta - Sumo Career

Sumo Career

Tenta then moved to Japan to pursue a career in sumo after being recruited by a former Yokozuna who met Tenta on a trip to Vancouver. In October 1985, he joined a sumo stable, Sadogatake, run by former-Yokozuna Kotozakura Masakatsu (his stable also produced current Ōzeki Kotoōshū Katsunori from Bulgaria). Following tradition, the young sumōtori took the name of Kototenta (Koto + Tenta), translated as Tenta the Harp.

Beginning the sport at age 22, he entered nearly seven years later than many non-college aspirants. The combination of his size—he already weighed 192 kg (423 lb) at a height of 6´5.75"—and training as a wrestler were to his advantage in learning and advancing in the sport. The novice won a string of 17 consecutive victories in his first six months, and was later renamed Kototenzan, Heavenly Mountain Harp. The novelty of being a rare Westerner sumotori in the mid-1980s, and the third-ever Caucasian, garnered him press coverage, and he earned the additional nickname of the "Canadian Comet".

Despite doing well as a newcomer he soon quit the sport due to the difficulty of the sumo lifestyle and the toll the hard ring surface was taking on his body. In addition, the sumo world frowned on the large tattoo of a tiger on his left biceps and, though he covered it during matches, would have required him to remove it via skin graft before moving up to the higher level competitions (in Japan tattoos are associated with gangsters).