Sport: The Giant Bird

One of the highest-paid athletes in Japan looks like a candidate for a Vic Tanny reducing course. He weighs in at 303 lbs., and his stomach is roughly the size and shape of a medicine ball. Yet Koki Naya, known professionally as Taiho (loosely, "Giant Bird"), makes upward of $50,000 a year for practicing his specialty, and when he appears, clad in a loincloth, his long hair bundled in a topknot, he sends shivers of delight through the bobby-sox set. At 22, Taiho is the youngest grand champion in the history of sumo wrestling,...

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