Standing proudly at 5 feet 7 inches, Angelo Jesus Lizardi might as well have been on a quest to battle Goliath as he stepped into a sumo fighting ring on a recent bright Saturday evening in the courtyard of Japan Village in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He is a muscular wrestler, but compared to his opponent, he is also, well, small.
Mr. Lizardi, 25, and weighing about 167 pounds, was facing off against one of his own coaches, Daniel Robert Douglas, who, at roughly 360 pounds and 6 feet 6 inches, towered over him.
They were there as members of the New York Sumo Club, which has brought the ancient combat sport to the city, giving its practitioners a place to test their confidence, experience a mental boost, and perhaps most importantly, find a community, Mr. Lizardi said.
As fans watched, some with mouths agape, the two fighters slammed directly into each other, with Mr. Lizardi burying his face in Mr. Douglas’s chest. They grappled and fought for dominance near the edge. Then, Mr. Lizardi managed to grab Mr. Douglas’s right leg and pull it up, disrupting Mr. Douglas’s balance and driving him out of the ring.
Not only did Mr. Lizardi win, but he placed at the top of the open-weight class division by the end of the day, ranking fourth out of 33 in what had been the first amateur sumo tournament in New York City, earlier this month.
“I live for those moments,” Mr. Lizardi said later.
The Empire Cup, held by the New York Sumo Club on May 17, drew countless spectators who munched on snacks, some sipping on beers, as they cheered on 56 athletes, who fought for a trophy and, mostly, bragging rights.
The one-day competition was the culmination of three years of hard work by Oscar Dolan, the club’s founder, who is a wrestler himself and a former U.S. lightweight silver medalist.
Mr. Dolan, 25, who majored in Japanese in college, said he became a sumo fan after a project he did in 2019 on Enhō Yūya, a popular lightweight sumo wrestler at the time. After a few years, Mr. Dolan wanted to try it for himself. He founded the organization in 2022 after realizing there weren’t any amateur sumo wrestling clubs in the city.
“I had to start my own, kind of begrudgingly at first, but, you know, starting my own made me get so much more into it,” he said.
The New York Sumo Club has grown steadily since its inception, even accounting for hiccups, Mr. Dolan said. The club has about 100 wrestlers, with around 20 regulars. When it first started, members met and grappled on the meadow in Prospect Park. Now, they gather every Sunday at Queens Jiu Jitsu, a martial arts school in Astoria, and the club is “pretty much sustainable, almost profitable,” Mr. Dolan said.
The club even has its own genuine portable dohyō, a sumo wrestling ring, made by Sanpuku Shōji, which is handmade and imported from Japan, and is similar to those used by wrestlers there.
Membership in the club is “mostly based on vibes,” Mr. Dolan said. Members pay a $20 mat fee per session, and if you show up at least once a month you’re considered a “regular.” There’s also a group chat for people who want to talk about sumo in their free time.
Over the years, sumo has gained in popularity around the world, though it remains closely linked to Japanese tradition and culture. Despite that fact, many young people in Japan may see it as old-fashioned. On Wednesday, Onosato Daiki of Japan was named yokozuna, or grand champion, the highest title in the sport. He’s the first Japanese yokozuna in eight years, and only the second in 27 years.
Sumo fighters observe the original rules of the sport, which has been “practiced the same way for 1,300 years,” Mr. Dolan said.
In “Grand Sumo,” as the sport is known, the rules are fairly simple, according to the Japanese public broadcaster N.H.K.
The goal is to force your opponent out of the ring to win, or to “make him touch the ground with anything other than the soles of his feet.”
While the rules are largely the same, amateur sumo forbids explicit openhanded strikes to the face and bans a technique called Saba-ori, or forward force down, in which a larger wrestler will lean their entire weight onto a smaller opponent.
On the day of the Brooklyn tournament, gray clouds parted in time for the first match, bathing wrestlers in brilliant sunlight as the competition heated up.
Sumo matches are fast, and often end in seconds. Wrestlers enter the ring, bow and are told “hakkeyoi!,” a ceremonial salute that functionally means “go!” Immediately after, there is the slap of skin on skin as the wrestlers grapple, and the gyoji, or referee, repeatedly shouts “nokotta” (or “still in”) as the two opponents fight for a win. The fights are so intense that officials warned the Brooklyn crowd to watch for falling wrestlers.
Winners are forbidden from celebrating. Mr. Dolan reminded the wrestlers of this rule during the tournament, telling them that inside the ring, “we are samurai” and follow the Bushido traditional code of conduct of military warriors in feudal Japan, which emphasizes virtues such as honor and bravery.
One of the first wrestlers in tournament in Brooklyn was Mr. Lizardi, also known as A.J., who has been a club member for about a year and who works at a gym. Although he falls into the lightweight category, he likes to use speed and technique to outmaneuver giants.
“Some of these guys might be bigger, but they have no experience in grappling,” he said. “So it gives me the advantage to throw them off balance, you know, use their weight against them.”
After watching the World Championship Sumo exhibition at Madison Square Garden last year, Christopher Arnau, 41, knew he had to try it.
“I saw a 220-pounder like myself taking on the behemoths, and I said, ‘Hey, if they could do it, I could do it,’” he said.
So he looked online, found the club and joined. He had his first competition in Las Vegas last November and emerged with “some wins.”
Sumo is “very humbling,” Mr. Arnau said, adding that it’s a sport “where everybody gets thrown. Everybody gets slammed in the mat once in a while.”
Members of the New York Sumo Club praised the camaraderie they found in their group of wrestlers.
The community built by the club is an inclusive one, where “all body types, all gender expressions” are welcome, said Mr. Douglas, the club vice president and founder of the company Mountain Mawashi, which provides the belts for the club’s amateur sumo wrestlers.
A self-proclaimed “big guy,” Mr. Douglas, 32, said he likes sumo because he likes “seeing big guys move fast, move athletically, be explosive and be respected.”
Aimee Ortiz covers breaking news and other topics.
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