Nagoya 2023 Predictions

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With one day left before the basho, I will once again throw some predictions into the wind about the upcoming tournament. Looking back at the Natsu predictions, the most obvious misses were Yokozuna Terunofuji coming back at full strength and his Isegahama stablemate Nishikifuji falling flat at Maegashira #3. Otherwise, the real issues came from overshooting on Takayasu, Endo, and Kotoshoho. Not unrelatedly, those men all had to withdraw from the tournament with injuries. (Although for some reason both Takayasu and Kotoshoho came back again.) So let me go ahead and say that I will miss some of these predictions due to injury. It's a risk of putting together this right before the basho.

I will not be missing one major injury. Takakeisho is not on the Torikumi for the first two days, and he will be out for the entire basho. He apparently has a problem with the meniscus in both knees. He'll rest, go kadoban, and try to perform better in September. This does affect the rest of Sanyaku and upper Maegashira, since an on-paper tougher match is out of the way. That also leads to another notable miss. I undersold Daieisho and Wakamotoharu in May. Rationally and logically, those two should be at their ceiling.

Fortunately for sumo fans, they've blown past rationality and logic. They really perform well at Nagoya, they get to be Ozeki. I don't have them doing that well, but I don't have them falling on their face. I do have Hoshoryu at 11 wins, which would require a real call on an Ozeki promotion. The Yusho once again goes to Terunofuji if I am right, but he isn't running away with it. Otherwise, if debutants Gonoyama and Ochiai perform as well as I have them here, they get special prizes.

See the full predictions below, and start watching soon to see how bad I did with these.