Daily Tribune‘You wouldn’t normally fight somebody who was male, but it’s good to be an underdog and beat them.’
WRESTLERS Tori Moffett (left) and Toraigh Mallon practice in the ring during a sumo wrestling training session at a club in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
PAUL FAITH/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
BELFAST, United Kingdom (AFP) — Sweat darkened the white “dohyo” ring mat as Ireland’s first female sumo wrestler shoved and strained, learning a freshly-discovered sport.
Having tried the centuries-old Japanese discipline out of curiosity, Toraigh (pronounced Tori) Mallon, from Lisburn in Northern Ireland, now trains alongside bulky and beefy men, relying on balance and grit rather than sheer size.
During a coaching session ahead of the British Isles Sumo Championships in Belfast on Saturday, she paused between bouts to catch her breath.
“It’s hard work, like moving wardrobes full of cement, but I try my best,” the 32-year-old mental health nurse told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Mark Christie, 39, one of six male wrestlers at the session, welcomed her involvement.
“Women had less access to lots of sports in the past, it’s good that sport’s more open now,” he said.
Mallon first turned up on a whim last February after seeing an Instagram advert for a new sumo club in Belfast, stepping into an unfamiliar world of ritual, grappling and close-contact combat.
“It was me versus all the men, which was pretty intimidating yet empowering at the same time: you wouldn’t normally fight somebody who was male, but it’s good to be an underdog and beat them,” she said.
Knowing nothing about sumo or Japanese culture, she was immediately smitten by its speed and simplicity: force the opponent to touch the ground inside the dohyo ring, or out of it altogether.
‘Wedding dress’
Having the thick white cotton “mawashi” sumo belt put on her for the first time “felt like a wedding dress fitting,” Mallon recalled.
“Sumo’s fun, even if it is against mostly men, sort of like messing about with your siblings in the living room when you were a kid,” she added.
In recent weeks, a few other women have turned up to try their hand on the mat.
“Until then I think I was the only female sumo wrestler on the island of Ireland, Irish champion by default!” Mallon joked.
But with more women joining “now I’m going to have work a bit harder for that title.”
