Akebono Taro, the Hawaiian-born sumo wrestler who broke boundaries when he became the first foreigner to achieve the sport’s highest title, has died of heart failure in Tokyo, his family said in a statement on Thursday. He was 54 years old.
Akebono, born Chad Rowan, was named yokozuna, or grand champion sumo wrestler, in 1993 when he was only 23 years old. Only a year earlier, the Yokozuna Promotion Council denied him the title on account of his American nationality and Hawaiian birth, saying that no foreigner could possess the dignity of the highest honor in Japan’s national sport.
Yet Akebono’s promotion widened the way for other foreign-born sumo wrestlers to ascend in the sport and helped popularize it on the world’s stage—in the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, Akebono performed the sumo ring entrance ritual for a global audience.
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Akebono, who earned Japanese citizenship in 1996, said he never thought of himself as American first when he was in the ring. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘I’m an American, I’m going to go out there, plant my flag in the middle of the ring and take on the Japanese,’” he told The New York Times in 2013.
At 6-foot-8 and 466 pounds when he won the yokozuna title, Akebono towered over his opponents and used his stature to keep their attacks at bay in the ring. His size was a great asset, and he went on to win 11 total grand championships before retiring at the age of 31.
