rikishi quit sumo are manifold.
Injury, advancing age, the desire to have a family or declining prospects of success are among the most common grounds given for leaving the sport.
Telling the stablemaster that you want to go to America to hunt down and kill the man’s son because he has been fooling around with your stepmom not so much.
That’s exactly what happened with Cal Martin in the early 1970s, however.
Cal Martin (left) had a very eventful career in sumo. | COURTESY OF CAL MARTIN
The target of first-ever Caucasian sumo wrestler’s anger was a fellow rikishi who, ironically, had only met the woman in question while in the United States attempting to persuade the teenage American to return to pro sumo.