Fatties In a Fix

Sumo's respectability is dented by new corruption charges

Sumo has always seemed a peculiar sport. Two behemoth-size men in loincloths rinse out their mouths with water, throw salt in a clay ring and ram their massive bodies against each other for a few seconds under the suspended roof of a Shinto shrine. "Mysterious. Religious. Philosophical." That's how retired wrestler Keisuke Itai describes sumo. But if accusations he is making are to be believed, it is a sport that is also full of cheaters.

Itai, 43, left the ring in 1991 but has stepped back into the sumo spotlight with charges that much of the flesh-to-flesh combat is mere show....

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