Let's scroll 10 years back to 2006, when a wrestler named Tochiazuma emerged victorious in the January Grand Sumo tournament. That win, by a native Japanese grappler, was already a rare occasion, as Mongolian yokozuna (grand champion) Asashoryu almost completely dominated the sport and another Mongolian, a promising newcomer named Hakuho, was moving up fast.
By January 2007, Flash magazine went so far as to predict it would not be too far-fetched to imagine that within a few more years, sumo's sanyaku (the three highest ranks in the top division) would be composed entirely of non-Japanese wrestlers.
That hasn't quite come to pass, but it hardly matters: Out of the 78 past tournaments over 13 years (the Osaka 2011 tournament was canceled due to scandal over match fixing), native Japanese wrestlers have taken only five championships. This domination by non-Japanese wrestlers is all the more impressive if one considers that of the roughly 660 total number of grapplers in the ranks of professional sumo, non-Japanese account for only about 6 percent.
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