Sumo: Bigger and bigger

LARRY BRANN waits in a chair in the Jun Chong Martial Arts Center in Santa Monica, smiling as kids in tae kwon do uniforms file into class on a Sunday morning. Dressed in baggy shorts, Brann is not here to study the Korean martial art, but to take his first class in sumo wrestling, which thus far he has only seen on TV.

"It's the ultimate sport," says Brann. "It's like when you were a little kid, fighting with your brother or sister to be king of the mountain; your whole job is to get them down. That's what sumo is."

Brann, a 55-year-old physical therapist from Fullerton, was smitten enough with sumo to see beyond its image of massive men in topknots and diapers. He's not the only one. For the past several years, sumo has been attracting a following in Los Angeles, of people of all shapes, ages and athletic abilities who realize they needn't be big as Akebono (the 6-foot, 8-inch, 514-pound sumo legend) to experience the sport's concentrated grace, strength and precision. This interest has given birth to classes and competitions across Southern California, and inspired hundreds of new sumo competitors, some weighing as little as 100 pounds.

Though, at around 300 pounds, Brann suspects sumo might be a sport that matches his frame -- and his temperament. "The guys who do it are also incredibly graceful," he says. "And even though it's like combat, it's a very gentlemanly sport. There was a match in Japan recently, where one wrestler pulled the hair of another, and the crowd got very upset; it was considered very unsportsmanlike."

Sumo does have a noble history. According to the Kojiki (or Records of Ancient Matters), a written history of Japan compiled in AD 712, the gods Takemikazuchi and Takeminakata wrestled 2,500 years ago to see which would possess Japan's islands; Takemikazuchi won. The first match between mortals is said to have occurred in 23 BC, before the Emperor Suinin; in later centuries, sumo was performed for royalty and practiced by the warrior class.

Still, "when the public hears sumo, they think it's a big comedy with big fat guys bouncing around," says Andrew Freund, an American who caught the sumo bug back in 1997, while teaching English in Japan, when he and a friend joined in a sumo demonstration.