Miyagino sumo stable

TOKYO — If you think baseball has PR problems with its steroid scandals, consider the bruising that sumo’s reputation has taken in the last year.

Allegations of match-fixing. A rare two-tournament suspension for bad boy superstar Asashoryu, the yokozuna, or top-ranked wrestler, who was caught playing soccer back home on the Mongolian steppes after begging off a summer tour of Japan because of injury.

But the most serious blow was the death of young wrestler Takashi Saito while training last June. The 17-year-old was badly beaten by other wrestlers; then savagely overworked during an arduous practice. His death has brought new scrutiny upon the bullying endemic in sumo culture.

Saito collapsed at his “stable,” the cramped, austere buildings that are a combination gym and communal home for wrestlers. The stables operate by hierarchy, with aspiring wrestlers catering to the whims and appetites of the higher ranks. Wrestlers are sometimes beaten as they battle in training, whacked with bamboo or forced to wrestle until they nearly faint, ostensibly in the name of instilling a fighting spirit.

In February, prosecutors charged Saito’s former stable master and three wrestlers with criminal responsibility for the deadly assault.

The sport’s woes have all contributed to the giddy hopes now resting on the performance and personality of Hakuho (born Mönkhbatyn Davaajargal), another Mongolian who ascended last year at age 22 to the top rank of yokozuna.

Hakuho is seen as sumo’s savior. He is as smiley as Asashoryu is ferocious, but he’s also 6-foot-4 and 340 pounds of power and speed. After three years of Asashoryu dominating all other wrestlers like a bear flipping salmon from a stream, Hakuho has energized fans here with the prospect of a great rivalry, a Frazier for an Ali; a Magic for a Bird.

At the annual New Year’s tournament in January, Hakuho defeated the just-returned Asashoryu in an epic final day showdown that had the Japanese crowd roaring its approval for their favorite Mongolian.

The video was shot in Hakuho’s stable on a quiet residential street in Tokyo just before the January tournament. Practices start early — Hakuho shows up just before 9 a.m. to stretch and slap the wooden pole known as a teppo. The wrestlers then spar, before concluding the session with the butsukari-geiko, a drill in which one wrestler charges into the chest of another and drives him across the ring, back and forth, until exhaustion sets in.

On this day, Hakuho was entertaining two other high-ranked wrestlers from other stables for some pre-tournament head-butting. He first takes on 340-pound Kotomitsuki, one of the few top Japanese-born wrestlers in a sport increasingly dominated by foreigners, before turning to the towering and popular 6-foot-8 Georgian Kotooshu.

The bigger they are.