Taiho Koki
| Taihō Kōki | |
|---|---|
| 大鵬幸喜 | |
 |
|
| Personal information | |
| Born | Kōki Naya May 29, 1940 Shikuka, Karafuto, Empire of Japan |
| Died | January 19, 2013 (aged 72) Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan |
| Height | 1.87 m (6 ft 1 1⁄2 in) |
| Weight | 153 kg (337 lb; 24.1 st) |
| Career | |
| Stable | Nishonoseki |
| Record | 872-181-136 |
| Debut | September 1956 |
| Highest rank | Yokozuna (September 1961) |
| Retired | May 1971 |
| Championships | 32 (Makuuchi) 1 (Jūryō) 1 (Sandanme) |
| Special Prizes | Fighting Spirit (2) Technique (1) |
| Gold Stars | 1 (Asashio III) |
| * Up to date as of January 2013. | |
Taihō Kōki (大鵬幸喜, born Kōki Naya, Ukrainian: Іва́н Бори́шко Ivan Boryshko; May 29, 1940 – January 19, 2013) was the 48th yokozuna in the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling. He became a yokozuna in 1961 at the age of 21, the youngest ever at the time. He won 32 tournament championships between 1960 and 1971, a record that was unequalled until 2014. His dominance was such that he won six tournaments in a row on two separate occasions. He is the only wrestler to win at least one championship every year of his top division career, and he won 45 consecutive matches between 1968 and 1969, which at the time the best winning streak since Futabayama in the 1930s. After retiring from active competition he became a sumo coach, although health problems meant he had limited success. When he died in January 2013 he was widely cited as the greatest sumo wrestler of the post-war period. Since then Hakuhō, who regarded Taihō as a mentor, surpassed his record by winning his 33rd championship in January 2015.
Kōki was born on the island of Sakhalin (Karafuto Prefecture) to a Japanese mother Kiyo Naya and an ethnic Ukrainian father Markiyan Boryshko who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution. However, he is regarded as having come from Teshikaga, Hokkaidō, where he moved to as a child after the Soviet Union took control of Sakhalin in 1945. While on a sumo tour to the Soviet Union in 1965 he tried to locate his father, but without success. Taihō was the first of three great yokozuna who all hailed from Hokkaidō, the most northerly of the main islands of Japan, and who among them dominated sumo during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The others were Kitanoumi and Chiyonofuji.
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