Letter From Tokyo: Guess Who's Taking Over the Sumo Ring

A whole lot of foreigners, and that has Japan's traditionalists ready to rumble

I love Sumo," says Levan Gorgadze, 18, a former judo champion from Tbilisi, Georgia. And he's good at it too. Gorgadze hit the amateur European sumo tour two years ago, and in this year's Junior World Sumo Championship in Tokyo he finished second in heavyweight competition. With a small-town boy's big-city dream, he hopes to move from amateur to professional in the sacred rings of sumo in the sport's motherland. "The only place to reach the top is in Japan," he says. For the past two months, the 6-ft. 3-in., 276-lb. teen heavyweight has lived and trained with top amateur wrestlers...

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