Shishi Masaru

Shishi Masaru (獅司 大) born 16 January 1997 as Serhii Sokolovskyi (Сергій Соколовський), is a Ukrainian professional sumo wrestler from Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Nicknamed "mini-Baruto", he made his professional debut in January 2020 after a successful amateur career. He became sekitori when he reached the jūryō division in July 2023. He wrestles for Ikazuchi stable, and joined that stable when it was still named Irumagawa.

As of July 2023, he is one of the two Ukrainian currently competing in professional sumo, and the only one in the history of the sport to have reached the status of sekitori.

Early life and sumo background
Serhii started wrestling at the age of 6, and switched to sumo at the age of 15. According to his mother, he always liked to fight and wasn't afraid of pain, something she attributes to an ancestor on his father's side, who was a strongman and who fought alongside Nestor Makhno. As a kid, he played football as a goalkeeper but was scouted by a freestyle wrestling coach who motivated him to join his club. While climbing the weight categories of freestyle wrestling, Serhii exceeded the sport's maximum weight limit of 125 kg and joined the sumo club. In 2012, he won the European Sumo Championships. In 2016, he took part in several tournaments, including the European and World Championships, where he finished third in both individual and team competition. In 2018, he took part in the US Sumo Open where he won bronze and silver medals in the Heavyweight and Openweight categories respectively, being only defeated in the Openweight final by the champion, Russian Konstantin Abdula-Zade.

Since he had already decided to become a professional sumo wrestler, he moved to Japan in 2016, after the World Championships to train at Tokitsukaze stable. However, the stable already had a foreign wrestler and could therefore not recruit Shishi. At the invitation of Irumagawa stable, which had also scouted him, he stayed in Japan and was tested to see if he could acclimatize to the life in the stable. After over a year living and training at Irumagawa stable, he finally decided to enroll in 2020, bringing the number of countries with at least one professional sumo wrestler to 24. During his first months of community life, he revealed that he was prone to homesickness and had difficulty overcoming the language barrier (speaking neither English nor Japanese), crying regularly. Nonetheless, he managed to learn a few words of Japanese by mimetism, recalling that he was particularly proud of having managed to order a dish of chankonabe on his own at the restaurant.

Career
During the new recruits inspection, Wakafuji-oyakata (former maegashira Ōtsukasa), one of his coach at Irumagawa stable, said he looked like a "mini-Baruto" because at the time of his apprentice examination he was 1.91m and weighted 162 kg. He joined at the same time as 2019 high-school yokozuna, who joined Isegahama stable, Hokuseihō, who joined Miyagino stable, and , the second son of former sekiwake Takatōriki, who joined Ōtake stable; although they never faced each other in their maezumō debut. He was given the shikona, or ring name, Shishi (獅司), from the kanji for 'lion' (獅), to evoke the hopes of his master that he will "become the king of beasts", and the kanji meaning 'to govern' (司), in deference to former coach and stable owner, the former sekiwake Tochitsukasa.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Shishi has been regularly asked about the fate of his family, who stayed in the country. However, since the Japan Sumo Association forbids political comments to its wrestlers, he has always dodged the subject, limiting himself to simple comments on his communications with his parents and their view of his performances and refusing to comment on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit in Japan in May 2023. Furthermore, since the beginning of the invasion, he's received a great deal of acclaim from the public, even when he was in makushita, a division where the public isn't normally as enthusiastic.

On 26 January 2023, it was announced that Irumagawa-oyakata (former sekiwake Tochitsukasa), in anticipation of his mandatory retirement in April, would give control of his stable to coach Ikazuchi (former komusubi Kakizoe), without him inheriting the Irumagawa elder name. During this change, Shishi received encouragement from his new stablemaster, who told him he had "the potential to become a star".

During the May 2023 tournament, Shishi was in a position of potential promotion to the jūryō division. He first secured a kachi-koshi record over on Day 4, and went to earn a sixth victory with a win over upper-division wrestler Tokihayate, conceding just one defeat in his sixth match to eventual tournament winner  (Tatsunami stable). He finished the tournament with a score of 6–1 and was logically promoted to sumo's second highest division, jūryō, alongside Kihō and Yūma. This promotion makes Shishi the first Ukrainian wrestler in sumo history to achieve sekitori status, although sumo has also welcomed other wrestlers of Ukrainian descent, including the no less famous yokozuna Taihō, whose father was a Ukrainian from Kharkiv who fled the Russian revolution. At the press conference to mark his promotion to the rank of jūryō, he expressed his reservations about the situation in his home country, but vowed to offer his parents, who remained in Ukraine, the material and financial assistance they needed from then on. At the time of his promotion, Shishi received his shimekomi from his former master (former sekiwake Tochitsukasa) and was presented with a keshō-mawashi by the supporters' association of Izumisano (Osaka Prefecture). The all-white and gold keshō-mawashi bears the inscription Kishin (鬼心), meaning 'demon's heart', at the request of master Ikazuchi to inspire his wrestler to fight with demonic fervor. On the thirteenth day of the July tournament, Shishi achieved a kachi-koshi record by defeating Tamashōhō, thus securing his presence in the jūryō division.

Shishi continued his progress in the jūryō division by recording another good score at the September tournament. During the November tournament, he had a notable match against on day eleven, during which he broke his front teeth during the tachi-ai. Shishi had, however, recorded an eighth defeat the day before against the eventual winner of that month's tournament, Kotoshōhō. He finally worsened his score on the thirteenth day, in his match against Kagayaki, finishing the tournament with a score of 6–9.

Fighting style
Shishi's most common kimarite, or winning technique, is yori-kiri ('force out'), and he prefers a migi-yotsu, or left hand outside, right hand inside grip on his opponent's mawashi. However, it was noted that he could also be versatile, winning a not inconsiderable number of matches by oshi-dashi ('push out') and uwatenage ('overarm throw'). In the early years of his professional career he admitted that he wanted to emulate the style of former ōzeki Tochinoshin, who is his favourite wrestler.

Personal life
Shishi speaks Ukrainian and Russian. He however defines Russian as his main native language. Although most of Shishi's family remains in Ukraine, they are split between Ukraine and Japan. His parents and grandmother remained in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and his younger brother was moved as a refugee to Saitama Prefecture.

Despite being in Japan since 2018, Shishi still has difficulty speaking Japanese properly. Since his promotion to jūryō, this problem has become more of a hassle as sekitori respond more to interviews. To compensate for his level of Japanese, Shishi relies on his tsukebito (assistant) and stablemate, sandanme-ranked wrestler Saidaiji, with whom he converses when in doubt about the meaning of his sentence and who relays the answer to the journalists. The relationship between the assistant and his superior has also attracted the attention of observers, who are amused by this unprecedented situation, even dubbing Saidaiji the "Ippei Mizuhara of the kakukai", in reference to the translator to whom Shohei Ohtani owes a great deal during his interviews.