How Long Does It Take To Become A Yokozuna Sumo Wrestler?

Yokozuna is the highest rank in sumo, but over the past 250 years, the sumo wrestlers who've reached the title have gotten younger, and in the last few years, less Japanese.

Below are a few charts from poyo.co, via Reddit and put together with the Wikipedia list of Yokozuna, which show the age of sumo wrestlers who eventually become Yokozuna, both when they were promoted and when they began their careers. The chart bellow is in chronologic order (there are details on mouseover if you click through to the original), but there's also a version that puts time on the vertical axis to show which careers overlapped.

Here is the average length of a reign as Yokozuna:

There's more data you'd love to see for the fuller picture, like how participation numbers have changed over the years, and how age, nationality, fighting weight, and other variables line up between the general fighting body and the Yokozuna. But hey, at least now you know that it's been more than 20 years since a sumo wrestler held the title of Yokozuna for a full decade.

[ Poyo.co via Reddit]

Top image credit: Keith Tsuji / Getty Images Sport