NEW YORK – Two giant, shirtless men bow respectfully and then hurl themselves at each other in a violent pas de deux that ends with a victory in seconds.

But the setting for this tussle one Saturday night in April was not Tokyo or Osaka in Japan, but The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City. There, a boisterous, nearly full crowd got an in-person look at sumo wrestling, an ancient Japanese sport that is rarely seen stateside.

Twelve wrestlers listed between 95 and 180kg squared off under the aegis of World Championship Sumo, which is organising a series of exhibitions in the United States.

Despite the “world championship” name, the entrants were a cut below the champions who wrestle in Japan’s top division, which holds six events a year.

But among the wrestlers on hand was a favourite to win the tournament, Oosuna Arashi, known as Sandstorm, an Egyptian who did compete at the top level from 2013 to 2017.

A body builder at first, he took up sumo at age 14. “I didn’t understand it at the beginning,” Arashi said. “But there is no other sport like this. Any other sport, if you lose a point, you can stand up again; you can get your point back. But in sumo, it’s just one hit – you won; you lost.”

In a sumo match, two competitors meet in a ring, and each tries to throw the other out of it or to the ground. After some grabbing, twisting and throwing, the bout is over in a flash.

In Japan, the tournaments last 15 days, with wrestlers competing just once a night.

To appeal to a thrill-seeking audience, and to get the tournament over in an evening, the World Championship Sumo version included four rounds, in which a competitor must win two out of three bouts, meaning wrestlers potentially could be in 12 bouts in a night in the altered format.

If the rules were somewhat different from traditional sumo, the atmosphere was even more so.

Wrestlers offered just a quick bow before their matches, rather than the elaborate rituals familiar in Japan, which include stomping to clear the devil out of the ring and throwing salt to kill bad spirits.

The crowd chanted “USA” for the American wrestlers. Ringside interviews included a healthy dose of braggadocio more associated with mixed-martial arts or pro wrestling than sumo. And there was a lot more swearing than one would see at the decorous Japanese affairs.

Arashi is a big guy – about 1.93m tall and 161kg, according to organisers. But some top sumo wrestlers are as heavy as 200kg.

Despite this, the smallest guys have a shot. The little man of that Saturday’s card, Mohamed Kamal, known as Black Horse, checked in at 95kg, but used guile and positioning to make his way to the semi-finals.

To maintain his own figure, Arashi said he consumed from 8,000 to 10,000 calories in three to five meals each day. For his main meal, he eats almost 1kg of meat, such as chicken or beef. But he avoids sugar: “Sugar kills the muscles.”

One cannot just eat one’s way to a championship. Arashi’s daily training ran between two and four hours. “Eighty per cent of our training, we train for our legs,” he said. “The main thing for us is lower body training. Got to be so flexible. Got to be so powerful. Got to be so bulk.”

In the 2010s, Arashi competed at sumo’s top level. “I fought with the biggest names in the universe in sumo,” he said.

He left the top circuit in Japan in part, he said, because of sanctions he faced after he got into a fender bender. The problem was not the accident, but rather the mere fact that he had been behind the wheel – the Japanese Sumo Association does not allow wrestlers to drive.

“In Japan, as a sumo wrestler you cannot drive, even if you have a licence,” Arashi said. “You are a god, and the god cannot drive.”

The crowd in New York enjoyed the novelty of the spectacle. “It’s pretty awesome to see a different culture of sports,” said Mr Chris Frommeyer, a fan in attendance. “You think of big fat guys, but the mental capacity to know how to manoeuvre their opponents is insane to me.”

In the final, Arashi met Soslan Gagloev, an imposing Russian known as Big Bear, who in the first round had picked up his opponent and carried him out of the ring with imperious ease.

But Arashi dismissed his foe. “Big Bear is a teddy bear,” he said, offering the warning: “You want to go home or rest in peace.”

He backed up his words in the final. In the first bout, after a long tussle while holding each other’s belts, Arashi pushed Gagloev out of the circle. In the second bout, the Russian hooked a leg to get the win. But in the deciding match, Arashi turned Gagloev and threw him out of the ring. NYTIMES