How Raleigh became a hot spot for amateur sumo wrestling

By dathan

July 3, 2025

The Raijin Sumo Club welcomes anyone interested in the sport. Photo courtesy of Randy Basulto

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Hakkeyoi (“Put some spirit in it!”)

By Elliot Acosta

This Japanese term of encouragement echoes through the west Raleigh park where two wrestlers are facing off, disrupting the calm of a peaceful Sunday morning. In response to these shouts, the wrestlers lunge forward into each other, colliding their bodies in a thunderous crash. The opponents push, pull and jostle for position until one is forced out of a circle etched into the sand. This is practice with the Raijin Sumo Club, the burgeoning club that has imported the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling to North Carolina.

The bout is followed by a brief coaching session, lead by one of the club’s cofounders, Eric Hyugen. With a sumo national championship to his name and a frame built like a tank, Hyugen would be an intimidating figure if it wasn’t for his pleasant disposition.

Sporting a wide smile and infectious enthusiasm, Hyugen works with each wrestler to analyze every moment of the five-second bout as if it were an abstract arthouse film. The footwork of the initial charge, the grips in each grappling exchange, the motion of every push and pull—all the minute details are examined and considered.

Overseeing the sumo of a dozen wrestlers at this particular practice is a stark distinction from when the club began. In the spring of 2021, Hyugen and fellow cofounder Jared Faulk met for the first time at North Carolina State University’s Miller Fields.

What had united the two was an irresistible pull toward learning and becoming proficient in sumo wrestling. As novices to the foreign sport, the duo began their grassroots effort with only their passion for sumo and their ingenuity. The two claimed an open section of the public field, battling for space among the pickup soccer and frisbee games, then established a makeshift circle to wrestle in—known as a dohy—with a garden hose.

As they honed their balance, power and timing to either topple or push each other out of the dohyo, their sumo training began to gain the attention of onlookers and those who followed Faulk’s training chronicles on social media.

The crew would pick up new training partners as they continued to practice. Riding the momentum of their growing sumo community, Faulk and Huygen decided to name the club. They adopted the Raijin namesake, evoking the Japanese god of thunder. Four years later, what started as a duo trying to find their place in sumo has blossomed into a club with over 30 members that has produced multiple United States Sumo Federation national champions.

Although Hyugen provides essential feedback on the wrestlers’ techniques, instruction at Raijin’s practices is a community event with other members offering their observations. Contrasting Japanese professional sumo’s deeply rooted origins of being a secretive, serious, stoic and intense society, the Raijin Sumo Club provides unexpected levity, hospitality, and palpable joy.

Participation with the club doesn’t require an athletic background or even an understanding of sumo. All that is expected is a good attitude, an openness to learn and a small monthly donation, which is invested back into the club by means of events and equipment. Some of the members of the Raijin Sumo Club have been lifetime martial artists eager to acquire new skills.

Other members are simply fans of Japanese culture looking for a means to fully immerse themselves in it. Few of the Raijin club members are mountainous human beings that encapsulate the traditional sumo archetype; instead, the club caters to all people, with men, women and children of all sizes finding their way inside the wrestling circle.

Through these intense interactions inside the dohyo, a fellowship is formed. Members of the sumo club do not see each other as rivals or opponents or simply training partners. Rather, there’s a familial bond.

Although the sport of sumo may have been the catalyst of the Raijin Sumo Club, what has propagated the club’s growth has been the connections it establishes beyond sport. “Wrestling is a pure human activity. We live in a cerebral world, and the Raijin Sumo Club is a reminder that we’re human,” shares Faulk. It’s the reckoning with our humanity that is at the core of the Raijin Sumo Club experience.

An experience that, over the course of a 10-second sumo bout, reveals the duality of being human—how we can be both incredibly powerful and woefully imperfect. It’s an experience that is irreplicable on a screen.

Sumo is an unflinching, brutal and explosive sport, but the Raijin Sumo Club has been able to harness the sport’s energy to build a thriving and inclusive community. Learn about upcoming events and practices on Raijin Sumo Club’s social media accounts @ncsumo.