Los Angeles Times, Tuesday 24th July 1951 (Part 4, pages 1&2)

SPORT SCRIPTS
BY PAUL ZIMMERMAN
TIMES SPORTS EDITOR

    SUMO SUPREME - Massive mountain of man, all 300 pounds of him, is Maedayama, idol of Japan, who is top sumo wrestler. Maedayama will appear at Olympic.
 

    Mark Twain once said that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Or maybe it was Bill Miller.
    All the same sumo.
    Sumo is wrestling, Japanese style, and while everybody has heard of it, few Americans have seen it and none seemed to want to do anything about it. That is, no one until Joe (Toots) Mondt, the country's top grappling impresario, decided to bring some sumo artists to America.

TOOK SOME DOING

    They're due in town today via Pan American Airways; Cal Eaton of the Olympic has strengthened the ring floor there so that the quartet can appear at the same time-all weigh over 300 pounds each - to take a bow and then he hopes to have 'em back a week later for a demonstration.
    Getting sumo grapplers here is quite a problem.
    Contracts had to he signed with both the National Sumo Association and the Japanese government. Toots Mondt had to guarantee support of the families of the four; assure them that they could have their daily rations of rice, fish, seaweed and rice beer (Japanese style) and, of course, a lot of dough on the line.

POPULAR GUYS

    The most important gent in the quartet, we are led to believe, is Maedayama. When Mondt was in Japan making the deal, he wired the Olympic's Mr. Eaton and said:
    "When the news of Maedayama's departure hit Japan's press it was accorded with 270 inches more of space than the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur."
    That's a broad statement, but it is what the man said in that letter to quiet Cal Eaton.

IN DUTCH

     Maedayama is the most popular of the bunch, but he fell in bad grace a spell back. Seems it was this way.
    Seems Maedayama, like 80,000 Japanese, wanted to see Lefty O'Doul and his team play exhibition baseball on the same day he was to grapple at Osaka. He didn't show at Osaka.
    That put him in hot water with the National Sumo Association, which studied Maedayama's situation and decided the penalty should be for him to have his topknot cut off. This is a fancy hairdo twisted in a big knot and is affected by all strong sumo men, a mark of the trade, so to speak.

PUBLIC CEREMONY

    The sumo fathers, it is related, decided on a special public ceremony for the trimming but, unlike Samson, it doesn't seem to have affected his strength.
    The cutting-off show attracted more than 30,000. The Sumo Association apparently doesn't care much for baseball, especially if it threatens to outdraw its own grappling programs. That's what O'Doul's team seemed to do.
    Here, wrestling outdraws baseball on every given Wednesday night and no American wrestler would think or walking out in favor of a night at "beautiful" Wrigley Field, or Gilmore; and apparently neither would the grappling fans.

IT LOOKS SIMPLE

     Bill Miller, who professes to be the hep guy on subjects about wrestling here, says the explanation of sumo is simple.
    In sumo wrestling, it seems, the first man who touches the floor with any part of his body except the soles of his shoes has just lost himself the match right there and that quickly.
    In Japan you can also flip your opponent out of the ring for a victory, but our California Athletic Commission has issued an edict against such goings-on in the arenas, so that's out in this State.
    It is said that the grand sumo champ, and that's what Maedayama is, enjoys a position of eminence just one cut below the Emperor himself. With all his hair, that is.
    The three principal or basic sumo styles are tuki or thrusting; osi or pushing, and yori, clinging. In any event, it's as unlike our wrestling as cricket is different from baseball.
    P.S.: Promoter Cal Eaton says he hopes the Olympic fans would like to see some sumo and if they do, he hopes they'll want to see "some mo.”