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Outside of Japan

Amateur sumo clubs are gaining in popularity in the United States, with competitions regularly being held in major cities across the country. The US Sumo Open, for example, was held in the Los Angeles Convention Center in 2007 with an audience of 3,000. The sport has long been popular on the West Coast and in Hawaii, where it has played a part in the festivals of the Japanese ethnic communities. Now, however, the sport has grown beyond the sphere of Japanese diaspora and athletes come from a variety of ethnic, cultural, and sporting backgrounds.

Amateur sumo is particularly strong in Europe. Many athletes come to the sport from a background in judo, freestyle wrestling, or other grappling sports such as sambo. Some Eastern European athletes have been successful enough to be scouted into professional sumo in Japan, much like their Japanese amateur counterparts. The most notable of these to date is the Bulgarian Kotoōshū, who is the highest-ranking foreign wrestler who was formerly an amateur sumo athlete.

Brazil is another center of amateur sumo, introduced by Japanese immigrants who arrived during the first half of the twentieth century. The first Brazilian sumo tournament was held in 1914. Sumo took root in immigrant centers in southern Brazil, especially São Paulo, which is now home to the only purpose-built sumo training facility outside Japan. Beginning in the 1990s, Brazilian sumo organizations made an effort to interest Brazilians without Japanese ancestry in the sport, and by the mid-2000s an estimated 70% of participants came from outside the Japanese-Brazilian community. Brazil is also a center for women's sumo. A small number of Brazilian wrestlers have made the transition to professional sumo in Japan, including Ryūkō Gō and Kaisei Ichirō.