Kagayaki Taishi | |
---|---|
輝 大士 | |
Personal information | |
Born | Tatsu Ryōya June 1, 1994 Kanazawa, Ishikawa |
Height | 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) |
Weight | 163 kg (359 lb) |
Career | |
Stable | Takadagawa stable |
Current rank | see below |
Debut | May, 2010 |
Highest rank | Maegashira 4 (July, 2017) |
* Up to date as of June 26, 2017. |
Kagayaki Taishi (輝 大士) (born 1 June 1994 as Tatsu Ryōya) is a Japanese sumo wrestler. He made his professional debut in May 2010. He reached the top division for the first time in 2016. His highest rank is maegashira 4. He wrestles for Takadagawa stable.
Tatsu Ryōya was born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa and is the youngest of three children. His father was a truck driver. He was a normal-sized baby but grew quickly so that when attending kindergarten he had difficulty fitting into the uniform. He first began practicing sumo whilst in the first grade of elementary school. By the age of thirteen, when he ended his first year at junior high school he stood 1.83 m (6 ft 0 in), and weighed 108 kg (238 lb). After competing successfully in junior high school sumo he gave up formal education at the age of fifteen and entered the Takadagawa stable to pursue a professional career.
In the early part of his sumo career the wrestler subsequently known as Kagayaki competed as "Tatsu", his family name. On entering the professional sport Tatsu revealed that his idol was Hakuhō and that his aim was to become a yokozuna "in six or seven years".
He was still a month away from his sixteenth birthday when he made his professional debut in May 2010 but recorded six wins in the jonokuchi division to earn an immediate promotion. Two months later another 6-1 result saw him being promoted from jonidan to sandanme, the fourth-highest division. After five more tournaments he was promoted to makushita (third division) after a 5-2 result at the Nagoya tournament in July 2011.
On his third tournament in the division, in January 2012, the seventeen-year-old Tatsu tied for the lead with six wins at the end of regular competition but was defeated in the first round of an eight-man play-off for the makushita championship. Tatsu spent the next two years performing consistently in the mid to upper makushita ranks before a run of eight consecutive winning records (kachi-koshi) saw him being promoted to jūryō (second division) for the November 2014 tournament. It was at this point that Tatsu announced that he had adopted the shikona Kagayaki, after the express train service which runs between Tokyo and Kanazawa, his home town.