Name: Higashi Masakatsu
Nicknames: Gourikioh Masakatsu, Gourikioh-oyakata. Gourikioh means King of Brute Strength and was his shikona, his sumo ring name, while oyakata is a personal honorific marking him as a retired sumotori and a coach.
Age: 38
Height: 6 feet
Weight: 265 pounds
Apperance:A heavyset but not particularly tall man, which gives him a rotund, stocky build. He has a barrel-like chest, incredibly thick arms and legs that end in burly, appropiately large hands and feet and a thick log of a neck holding up a big round head that would appear oversized in a smaller man. Feature-wise, he has brown eyes and sports thick eyebrows and even thicker sideburns, though his black hair is cut short and neatly combed back at all times and his face remains clean-shaven. He also sports a slightly flattened nose, cauliflower ears and heavily scarred and callused arms and legs, a result of his dedication to hardening his body.
Clothing-wise, he walks around in a simple, thin cotton kimono known as a yukata, colored blue, and wooden sandals known as geta. While this outfit is usually reserved for those in the lowest divisions of professional sumo, Gourikioh himself feels that he shouldn't demand of his students something that he doesn't do himself and wears a rookie's clothes as a sign of humility. Underneath these loose robes he only wears an etchu type
fundoshi, a traditional japanese undergarment that was worn by soldiers during WW2. The little "apron" on the front sports the kanji
hisshou, or certain victory, in black.
Fighting Style:Koryu Sumo: Modern sumo has lost much of its martial focus. Though the ability to push, pull, lift and throw around opponents who weigh an average of 350 pounds on a regular basis while preventing those same things from happening to you is impressive (UFC champion Lyoto Machida credits much of his takedown defense to his training in it) and sumotori live for their sport in ways many pro athletes would find insane, current sumo wrestling lacks a proper striking game, has absolutely no ground game and its conditioning is deficient, as it emphasizes weight gain and prepares one only for the extremely short bouts of the sport.
Gourikioh's methods are a callback to the times where the art was seen as a battlefield tool by mixing it with strikes and grappling methods from other martial arts, along with extreme forms of body conditioning for actual fights. Despite the increased effectiveness of its striking and ground grappling game, Koryu Sumo still remains focused on standup grappling, namely throwing or slamming opponents to the ground while retaining one's footing. It is an agressive, straightforward and very effective method for those who can take the training, featuring explosive bursts of power and a rock solid body capable of withstanding truly absurd amounts of punishment.
In short: Agressive and straightforward, trains practitioners to be freakishly strong and tough, highly effective standup grappling game, mediocre striking and ground grappling skills.
Other Skills: Can perform purification rituals as per shinto tradition associated with sumo, speaks english fluently despite being japanese.
Personality: Gourikioh is good natured, polite and well meaning, always willing to lend a hand and opposed to unnecessary violence. He's not, however, a pushover. A born and bred fighter with a strong sense of justice who went through the extremely harsh and competitive professional sumo world, he'll readily engage in a scuffle if justified and is unlikely to back down once provoked.
Bio:Higashi Masakatsu was a sensation of the sumo world. A native from the small town of Kurusano, which lacks sumo stables, he didn't emerge into the professional sumo scene from the collegiate circuit as many expect from top wrestlers nowadays. One day he simply appeared at the door of a stable in the mainland, asking to be a sumotori. Though he started from the very bottom of the ladder and was considered small for the sport, his truly outstanding strength, toughness and dedication ensured that he would not be seen as an underdog for very long. The shikona of Gourikioh seemed to fit him like a glove as he manhandled men much larger and much, much heavier than him.
His eight year long career was quite fruitful, with a spectacular undefeated record, and he seemed to be a shoe-in for the highest rank of yokozuna, but it never happened. His profile was just too troublesome, he was an outspoken critic of the blind traditionalism of the Japan Sumo Association and repeatedly came under fire for what were seen as attitudes unbecoming of a rikishi, which included his push for the sport to regain its martial aspects. Finally tired of putting up with what he saw as a sterile environment for the development of the martial art, he quit the sport at age 28 amidst great shock from his peers and the fans.
After his retirement ceremony, he returned to his hometown and with the money he earned from his career sought to open an unofficial sumo stable, where he could promote a more combat-ready version of the art, derived from study into a myriad of other martial arts. He found, however, that his efforts were not exactly welcome. Sumo is a cultural institution in Japan, and attempts to modify it were seen as disrespectful, a view encouraged by the Japan Sumo Association. If he wanted to pursue his dream, he would have to emigrate.
And so Gourikioh went to America, the land of the free, where he thought he might have a better chance of promoting his martial art. The going was tough there too, even with his fluency in english. After all, in Japan he was a bona-fide celebrity and could attract students from name value alone, in the United States he was nobody. The very word "sumo" evoked images incompatible with martial skill, further limiting his pool of students, and his own training regimen drove away the vast majority of what few people he managed to attract.
His exhibitions in freestyle grappling and martial arts tournaments, however, drew the attention of one Missy Stone, who asked him to come to a seemingly godforsaken city, infested with gang violence. Unlike reasonable people, Gourikioh saw this as a perfect chance to prove that his sumo was effective in real fights and jumped at the chance, hoping to establish a school in such a tough city.
