Natsu 2025 Power Rankings
The usual pre-basho Power Rankings are here, and the top is not surprising.
Sumo starts on Sunday! Get your team picked on Fantasizr so you’re ready.
With the Natsu basho coming up in a few days, time has come for the Power Rankings. There is no mystery about who the top rikishi is. Whether you have followed sumo for years or you just started watching in March, you are well aware Onosato is very, very good. Spoiler alert (but not really): The guy shooting for the quickest ever Yokozuna promotion is leading the pack.
But there’s more to it once you dig a little deeper. Let’s look at what the formula spit out, then get into the notes. First, a reminder of how the formula works:
Take the Fantasy Basho score for each Makuuchi basho across the last year.
Add 10 points for a Yusho and 5 points for a Jun-Yusho.
Multiple any Juryo win totals by 1.5
Take any Makushita win totals as they are.
Multiple the most recent basho by six, the next most recent by five, and so on over the last year. Add those totals up, then add a Bonus which is the same as the current game’s budget number.
The Natsu 2025 Power Rankings:
Yes, Onosato is unsurprisingly on top. But he is also way on top. His score of 601 is 93 points ahead of Hoshoryu. A similar gap from Hoshoryu lands at Daieisho, who is sixth on this list. Dropping a similar amount from Daieisho goes to Endo, who is twenty-sixth on this list. That is an absolutely amazing gap. Onosato is setting records, dominating Makuuchi, and winning yusho, yet he may be underrated. In fact, he’s already getting some of the Hakuho treatment from opponents. Other rikishi are going against their brand of sumo because they know he is different and needs a different approach. He is still figuring things out, but while he is performing at an absurdly high level and scaring opponents.
While Onosato is dominating by score, Hoshoryu and Kotozakura are immediately behind him on this list. Despite Hoshoryu’s bad Yokozuna debut and Kotozokura’s dismal 2025 so far, Onosato, Hoshoryu, and Kotozakura represent the last three yusho winners. Hoshoryu also has a 13-2 Jun-Yusho in there. They also represent the current Yokozuna and Ozeki corps. We can get excited about younger wrestlers and marvel at what Takayasu and Tamawashi are doing in the late stages of their remarkable careers. Just don’t lose sight that the top three wrestlers on the Banzuke are the top three performers over the last few basho. After years of injured Yokozuna and problematic Ozeki, it’s worth reflecting on that fact.
And the rest of Sanyaku follows the Yokozuna and Ozeki here. I haven’t felt comfortable predicting what Takayasu is going to do for years, and Kirishima’s recent performances are clearly not what he’s been at his best. Daieisho and Wakatakakage keep plugging away, but you’ve got to wonder what their current ceilings are. What the Power Rankings demonstrate is that this quartet has performed well recently, arguably better than anyone else. They aren’t that far ahead of anybody else, but they are, officially, ahead.
There are a few rikishi who present challenges for the structure of the Power Rankings formula. Most notably are the two Ukrainians, Shishi and Aonishiki. Conveniently, they are also ranked near each other. Shishi has dominated Juryo and been mediocre in Makuuchi until this last basho. Then he got 9, which is hardly dominating, but is a good score. It’s hard to know if that means he can hang with the Gonoyamas, Abis, and Hiradoumis of the world. But that’s where he’s ranked because of the weird mix of recent scores.
Aonishiki is right there as well, but there’s a reason to think he’s better than the Power Rankings suggest. The Blonde Bomber had a chance to join an 11-win playoff on the final day of the March basho, where he did beat Oho but Takayasu and Onosato also won to go to 12 wins. Still, that was his debut in Makuuchi and that final day was his 21st birthday. There are three Makushita basho on his ledger here, which pulls down his overall score. He probably can handle more than Maegashira #9, but also just hanging in would be pretty solid for the youngster.
The bottom 5 are Shonannoumi, Tamashoho, Roga, Nishikigi, and Tokohayate. That’s relatively fair positioning, except for maybe Roga. The Power Rankings don’t know he received a “O” in January because of injury. They just know he’s got nothing from that. What he did was drop from mid-Maegashira to upper JUryo, where he was pretty good. There’s no reason to think he isn’t of mid-Maegashira quality still, unless the injuries crop back up. What is notable about this bottom group is that they are roughly even here. No one should get smoked by Makuuchi, but also the obvious candidate to dominate lower-Maegashira in week one isn’t present either. Tokihayate is relatively high on the rankings, but he isn’t outpacing people by enough to think he’s ranked too low. Keeping a Makuuchi spot could be a real battle this time.