Ganryu is an original Tekken character that has appeared in Tekken 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 as well as the Tag Tournament games. Unfortunately, despite being one of the OGs, he's consistently near the bottom, if not THE bottom, of franchise character popularity lists. Part of this is that sumo characters just aren't popular, but Ganryu in particular is especially unlikeable.
Essentially, his ultimate motivation in the Tekken franchise is just to get laid. First he chased after Michelle Chang, and was totally shot down, and then he went after Michelle's adopted daughter Julia Chang, despite something like a 35-year age difference ... and was instantly rejected again. Ganryu is just kind of a gross creep.
His story as a sumo wrestler is similarly bleak. He started off well, and was the youngest rikishi to reach the rank of ozeki, but because of his antics on and off the dohyo - namely his arrogant attitude and general disregard for hinkaku, but more specifically illegal gambling which is a HUGE no no in Japan - he was quickly kicked out of the sport. I can't stress enough that retirement is a big deal in sumo. There is no speculation of a potential comeback for years after you retire. When you file your retirement papers in sumo, whether you were forced to quit or do it willingly, you're done forever. Ganryu was, in fact, actually already out of sumo when the first King of the Iron Fist tournament happened and he entered the competition to try to prove that he could still be one of the top fighters in the world. He failed, of course, because he kinda sucks.
You have to consider what might have been, though, if he didn't speedrun the fall from grace out of the top echelons of sumo. I want to compare him to Asashoryu, but Ganryu actually did it first! As I mentioned, in the Tekken world Ganryu was the youngest to ever reach ozeki. In the real world, that record is held by the 65th yokozuna Takanohana who reached ozeki at 20 years and 5 months old. We have to assume Ganryu reached ozek at roughly that same pace in the fictional Tekken world because any faster would be almost impossible.
I want to focus on this a bit because, despite the fact the matches can be over in literally a second, everything else in sumo happens at a pretty agonizingly glacially slow pace. Working your way up the ranks takes years just to get to the top makuuchi division, and then even longer to get to where you could go on an ozeki run. If you started sumo at the minimum age of 15 you'd start in the lowest jonokuchi division, and then have to grind your way up through the 600 plus dudes in the rest of the divisions. With only six tournaments a year to move up the rankings it can, and does, take several years just to get to the second highest juryo division and actually start earning a paycheck.
It is also more likely than not to sort of get stuck in juryo for a while as it is an extremely competitive division with a mix of former top division guys trying to get back, skilled young up and comers, and "good, but not quite good enough" guys desperately treading water who want to keep getting paid so they aren't going to give up their spot very easily. And then you'd eventually reach the top makuuchi division where you grind for a while until you reach the named san'yaku ranks. Then, after all of that, you still have to put together three good tournaments in a row - so six more months minimum - with at least 33 wins between them to even reach ozeki, which is very difficult. Even the undisputed greatest of all time, Hakuho, took 3 years to get to Makuuchi, and then another 2 years to reach ozeki at 21 years old.
There is another way to enter sumo called tsukedashi that moves you up the ranks a lot faster than allowed successful college or other accepted amateur sumo champions to start in the third highest Makushita division at rank 10 or 15. This rule was changed in 2023, however, and now they start at Makushita 60 instead. The way it worked before, though, you could theoretically win the Makushita division in your first tournament, spend a couple of tournaments in Juryo, and reach Makuuchi in your 4th ever tournament - this only happened a couple of times ever, just to show how hard it is even when starting so high. The thing is, though, that you'd still be 19 or 20 years old or so, so grinding through makuuchi to get to the san'yaku ranks will likely add another year at least and then several more basho to get to ozeki. To reiterate, any younger than Takanohana's 20 years and 5 months is basically impossible.
Not that it can't be done way, way faster. Current ozeki Onosato was one of the last rikishi allowed to start at Makushita 10 in the old tsukedashi system and he skyrocketed to ozeki after just his 9th tournament. He was already 24 years old, though.
To bring it back to the purpose of this video, it really gives you some perspective how great Tekken's Ganryu must have been on the dohyo. Before he, y'know, got kicked out of the sport for being a stupid moron. I have to say that I rather appreciate how clear and blunt Namco was with Ganryu's sumo career instead of the vagaries and pussy footing around like Capcom does with E. Honda. We know exactly what Ganryu accomplished and I like that.
Ganryu's height and weight are also probably more accurate than Honda's as well. He's listed at six foot three and 276 pounds, which I'm inclined to believe. He's been out of sumo for quite a while, so "slimming" down to 276 is pretty reasonable for a retired rikishi. He's still a huge dude, and seems to be properly in scale with the rest of the Tekken cast. To me, he looks pretty realistic for his height and weight and body type compared to Honda's blatant inaccuracies in Street Fighter.
Despite bombing out of sumo disappointingly early, you can tell Ganryu still has at least some love and respect for the sport by the way he fights in Tekken. Basically all of his move list is sumo moves that are mostly accurately named after kimarite (the 82 winning moves in sumo) or other general sumo techniques. The moves are greatly exaggerated to fit into an over the top fighting game, but are still quite a bit clearer and more realistically depicted here than what you see with Honda in Street Fighter.
The fact that many of his moves and combos start with a tachiai - squatting down and putting both fists on the ground before moving forward - is the prime example of that. He goes from a tachiai to striking or grappling just like real sumo wrestlers do. It's sort of an "if you know you know" thing, but reading through the move list and seeing so many real sumo techniques represented brings a smile to my face.
Interestingly, some of his moves are also based on higi - or one of the five losing moves a sumo wrestler can do such as falling down or stepping out on your own without your opponent forcing you. Ganryu sits down or falls on his back as part of combos which is pretty wild. Tekken is essentially MMA and not sumo, though, so he wisely learned to adapt.
His stated goal for fighting in King of Iron Fist tournaments is mostly to prove that he is still strong, as well as to try to get laid, so strictly adhering to sumo techniques shouldn't be expected. Taking all that into consideration, Ganryu actually represents sumo surprisingly well in his fighting style. Better than Honda does, anyway.
Ultimately, though, Ganryu is just kind of a big disappointing loser. He had all of the tools to be one of the greatest sumo grand champions of all time but threw it all away and got tossed out of the sport even faster than it took for his record setting ozeki promotion. Then in his post sumo career he creeped on Michelle and Julia Chang - and got shot down, of course - and never really made much of an impact as a competitor during the King of Iron Fist tournaments. It's no wonder why he's consistently among the least popular characters in the Tekken franchise. Ganryu sucks.
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