I already share some photos from Sumo Grand Tournament in Osaka, Japan. In this post, I want to share a video of a Sumo bout that I captured using my OnePlus 6 smartphone. This is the 2019 Sumo Grand Tournament.
I want you to see how the actual fight is in this large EDION Arena and also see how it is like seeing far away in the arena and trying to capture a video of the Sumo fight from far away just using digital zoom. Back then I didn’t have my DSLR camera. I was just capturing photos of my travel journeys using my smartphone camera.
Before the big fight took place, I was sitting very close to the dohyō (土俵), the stage where the fight takes place. Then I go to my original sit which was up at the top, quite far from the dohyō.
I was able to capture quite a good quality video of the fight, considering that I wasn’t shooting with the optical zoom and rather with a wide-angle lens. There is an option to got down and shoot for a closer distance. However, I met a Japanese guy there who was explaining to me about Sumo, so I preferred staying with him.
This was my first Sumo experience in Japan ever—and one of the best I have to say. I love Sumo so much, it’s so entertaining to watch.
As you can see from the video, the image quality is quite fuzzy when I zoom in, but still useable. In that fight you can see Enhō Akira, he is only 168cm tall weighing 99kg, the smallest in the top division.
Enho lost in that particular fight I thnk he thought against Chiyomaru Kazuki, but I am not 100% sure. He is a very skilled Sumo wrestler and it is just fascinating to watch him wrestling against the big guys in the top division. Enho tactics are more of evading a grab and trying to get a left-hand grab. I enjoy viewing his fight every time.
That Sumo fight video was recorded on March 15, 2019, at 3:40 pm. You can see that there is more crowd but as we got around after 4:00 pm, there were many more people as the top division most favorable fights took place.
It was a great experience and one of my favorite experiences that I had in Japan.