Sumo’s away day shook London. Could it ever take off?

London’s prized Royal Albert Hall has seen symphonies, rock concerts and ballets. But today it smells like wet dirt, as 11 tonnes of specially selected soil is shovelled from the marshes of Kettering (the only place with the perfect ratio of clay and sand) into its central stage. Without speaking, a team of Japanese builders churn into action – first compressing the soil with wooden mallets, then old Asahi beer bottles, before shaping the mound into a perfect 4.55 metre circle. Finally, the edges are sliced off the now-hardened clay to reveal a smooth, flat ring. This is the dohyō — the sacred stage of sumo. It’s an hours-long process, performed with laser-focused familiarity.

This is only the second time in history an official five-day sumo tournament has been held outside Japan. The first was here too, in 1991. Over the week since the wrestlers arrived, news of their oversized presence ricocheted through the capital. ​“Did you know they had to reinforce the toilet seats?” I hear one girl relay to her friend on the Tube, one of many rumours spreading (it’s true – nails were reportedly involved). There’s also the sheer amount of food consumed: the venue ordered over 700kg of rice; there are reports wholesalers ran out of instant noodles. Online, they’ve become viral sensations – grinning outside Buckingham Palace, straddling Lime bikes in Soho, and gleefully parading across Abbey Road.

For most people in the UK, the image of a sumo wrestler – vast and wide, hair slicked into a top knot – is as far as their knowledge of the sport extends. Their appearance on British soil clearly has the capital transfixed. But could the sport ever actually break beyond spectacle and reach mainstream appeal? Sumo is, in some ways, perfectly suited to modern attention spans: the matches are short and brutally simple. Two men enter; one leaves the ring.

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Photos by Ella Glossop

And yet, opening night at the Royal Albert Hall tournament feels more like what you’d associate with live theatre than a sporting event. It’s one thing to watch a wrestling match from a red velvet chair, for a start, with the possibility of a £15 glass of prosecco at the interval. Tickets for the sold-out event cost up to £1,000, with even the cheapest seats at £100.

For the first 45 minutes – which are dedicated entirely to the hypnotic opening rituals – the audience is resigned to respectful silence and hushed gasps. It’s a far cry from the field-side heckling that accompanies most sporting matches. Only when the first bout begins does the atmosphere loosen. Two fighters enter the ring, bending the anticipation in the room to their will as they perform shosa (pre-match rituals): first rubbing hands together to rid themselves of impurities, a sharp clap to summon the gods, and a handful of salt to purify the space. They move with almost balletic elegance – one wrestler stretching his leg up into a full splits, the other daintily flicking his wrist – followed by heavy, thumping reminders of their strength as their feet plummet back onto the floor. 

Finally, they charge into the tussle – pushing, tugging – flesh-cushioned claps and dense muscular smacks reverberating through the hall. The fight lasts seconds, and then the next one begins – a rhythm of rising tension and explosive release. As bouts speed by, onlookers become more attuned to the wrestlers’ individual styles: there are the low-slung chargers, the agile punchers, the stoic, unmoveable giants.

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For Martin Gamble White, who helped organise the 1991 tournament, having sumo become a mainstream sport in the UK is not the point. ​“It’s more known about, for sure, but it’s never going to catch on,” he says, matter-of-factly. ​“We’re never going to have a sumo league in the United Kingdom.

“It’s a unique sport, more than a sport in Japan. I think it should stay that way. But to present it here in all its authenticity – that sends a chill down my spine.”

While sumo has always been deeply woven into Japanese culture, its domestic popularity has waned in recent years. Younger audiences increasingly turn to baseball, football and MMA, while sumo’s rigid traditions, gender exclusion, and closed world of training stables can make it feel out of step with modern life. Wrestlers live communally under strict hierarchies, train before dawn, and follow regimented diets of chanko nabe, a hearty stew that fuels their massive builds. It’s a way of life that often begins in the teenage years and, notoriously, can take a toll: former professionals have lifespans around 20 years shorter than average Japanese men.

Abroad, however, sumo is adapting. The Japan Sumo Association’s English-language YouTube channel, Sumo Prime Time, launched in 2022 and now has nearly 100,000 subscribers. And in Britain, curiosity is starting to morph into participation.

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British Sumo – officially recognised by the European Sumo Federation in 2023 and by the International Sumo Federation earlier this year – now oversees 13 amateur clubs across the country. It’s an impressive leap from just a few years ago. ​“Three years ago, there were maybe two clubs in England,” says Scott Findlay, president of British Sumo and coach at Sumo Scotland, near Glasgow. ​“Now we’ve got 14 clubs across all four nations in Britain, and that happened before the Albert Hall. But with the Albert Hall, it’s certainly raised the profile. Every club has had at least a couple of people reach out since the tournament.” 

Findlay believes sumo’s future outside Japan depends on that kind of accessibility. ​“Only in Japan are there no weight classes,” he explains. The lack of categories is part of what gives sumo its iconic David-and-Goliath clashes, but it also limits participation. ​“Everywhere else, there are classes – men’s, women’s, children’s – so anyone can take part. We try to keep some of the traditions, like bowing in respect and the chikara-mizu [power water] ritual movements, but we don’t always throw salt, because that’s part of the Shinto element. We nod to the culture, but adapt it for where we are.”

Only two sumo wrestlers from Britain have ever been invited to train professionally in Japan – the most recent is 15-year-old Nicholas from Hull, who this summer will move to a prestigious stable in Tokyo. Coached by Findlay since he first picked up the sport two years ago, Nicholas has already won multiple international titles and learned Japanese in preparation for the move. His acceptance marks a rare bridge between Japan’s closed sumo world and the growing British scene that Findlay has helped nurture.

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For the most part, though, professional sumo in Japan remains an insular, hierarchical world. In the hall, this sealed-off quality, the sense of peering into something ancient and unreachable, is part of its power as a spectacle; it’s what keeps the Royal Albert Hall transfixed. But it’s also what keeps the sport closed to most people, like women and foreigners. In Britain, it’s becoming something else entirely: a grassroots sport with room for everyone. ​“We’ve got hundreds of wrestlers now across the UK,” Findlay says. ​“That shows we’re doing something right – keeping the respect and tradition, but opening it up to everyone.”

Back in the Albert Hall, everything is performed exactly as it would be in Japan. As we reach the higher-ranking wrestlers, the match sponsors are paraded on vertical flags around the dohyō. They provide the prize money for each bout, handed to winners in crisp envelopes at the end. 

For the organisers, showing the event took on the task of educating onlookers before it could entertain.“To the Western audience, a lot of the ritualistic and spiritual aspects need to be explained,” said the Royal Albert Hall’s head of programming before the show. ​“We have to make sure that’s well understood, because that forms so much part of sumo as both a tradition and a sport.” He hopes to make the tournament semi-regular – ​“maybe every five years or so,” he says, ​“though nothing’s confirmed yet.”

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Photos by Andy Paradise

By the end of opening night, the early hush has dissolved into the kind of rowdy tension more familiar at football matches. In the final round, the presenter announces ​“one of the most popular wrestlers today,” and the crowd roars as bull-like legend Ura steps forward to face the 50kg heavier Onosato. The spat begins – Ura’s flailing agility drawing screams from the crowd as he’s pushed to the brink three times before Onosato finally sends him tumbling out of the ring.

If the night proves anything, it’s that sumo is fiercely entertaining as a spectacle. What audiences responded to wasn’t the promise of a new homegrown sport, but the privilege of witnessing something ancient and immovable briefly transplanted to foreign soil.

Whether that fascination can survive translation – if sumo can thrive here once its mystique is stripped back and adapted for broader participation – is yet to be seen. If British sumo does continue to grow, it might not look exactly like its Japanese counterpart. But perhaps that’s the point: a sport rooted in centuries of ritual, finding new life in a red-carpeted London concert hall.

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Ella Glossop is Huck’s social editor. Follow her on Bluesky.

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