Hidetora Hanada’s journey has led him from a high-profile sumo wrestling prospect to a college football player in Colorado. Now he may be heading to the world of pro wrestling.
The Colorado State defensive lineman posted on Instagram that he received an NIL offer from the WWE and was in attendance for the Royal Rumble on Saturday.
The WWE NIL program was launched in 2021 with the intention “to recruit and develop potential future Superstars,” according to the WWE. Other Colorado names in the program include former Pueblo West track and field star Jeremy Cody and four-time Colorado state champion heavyweight wrestler Cohlton Schultz.
“I experienced a level of intensity and thrill that was completely different from football or sumo wrestling — something truly unique to WWE,” Hanada writes.
The 6-foot-1, 290-pound Hanada made headlines in 2023 when he spurned an opportunity to enter professional sumo wrestling to pursue American football at Colorado State. In two seasons, he has appeared in two games and recorded three tackles for the Rams.
He became an amateur yokozuna in 2020 after winning the All-Japan Sumo Championships, which pit the best Japanese collegiate wrestlers against one another. He captured the gold medal in the sumo heavyweight division at the 2022 World Games, defeating Daiki Nakamura in the finals. Nakamura — who would assume the name Onosato once he turned pro — has since climbed up to the rank of ozeki (sumo’s second-highest ranking behind only yokozuna) and has won two championships in the sport’s top division.
“Having had the opportunity to step into a completely new world and witness the pinnacle of sports entertainment, I am truly grateful to be involved with WWE,” Hanada writes.
While football players are quite common in pro wrestling — The Rock (Miami, Fla.), Roman Reigns (Georgia Tech) and Goldberg (Georgia), to name a few — sumo wrestlers are far less common. John Tenta — who wrestled under the monikers Earthquake, Avalanche and Golga — had a short run in sumo, winning all 21 bouts he had in 1986 before leaving the sport. Akebono, the Hawaiian native who became sumo’s first foreign yokozuna, had a short stint in the WWE in 2005 before wrestling mostly in Japan.
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