Originally Posted by BossChief:
A few teams have tried it in the past and it never worked out. Last time was probably 20+ years ago, though.
Yep, I read that Al Davis tried years back but the two major issues he faced were that the sumo wrestlers didn’t have the conditioning to finish a 60-minute game and the NFL couldn’t offer them more money than what they were making in Japan so that ended things. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Fish:
What exactly are you basing that shitty opinion on?
The entirety of sumo wrestling takes place inside a circle that's smaller than any turf that any offensive lineman has to protect.
No sumo could be a tackle -- it's simply too much ground to cover. There's an outside chance they could run block along the interior, but even then you're running purely a power game with no pulling.
The sumo skillset is valuable, Creed Humphrey was a wrestler, it is actually useful. But that's not all there is to OL play. [Reply]
From a purely athletic standpoint, sumos would probably do fairly well in football. They'd have to increase their stamina/endurance of course, learn how to block, and learn a playbook, but sumos aren't dumb, and stamina is simply just training. But from a strength and athleticism perspective, sumos probably could make the transition without too much trouble. Biggest issue would be that most of how they've trained to fight would be flat illegal in the NFL. [Reply]
