no, sumo's always been rife with scandal & match fixing. it's not like that chapter in freakanomics completely surprised japanese society. the public face of sumo promoted by NHK (japanese gov broadcaster w/ exclusive broadcast rights) won't even let the commentators mention anything remotely scandalous, but it's not like nobody had any idea

there was some reform a few years back and it's not as rampant as it was but to think it's ever going to be eradicated is pretty foolish

Match fixing is so common in combat sports we might as well embrace it by now and figure out how to reward people for the best match fixing.

Or just watch pro wrestling.

Kintamayama on youtube isn't held by those restrictions, he regularly mentions that guys are just back from some scandal. These seem to range from driving their own cars (BANISHED TO MMA!) to breaking the skulls of their juniors cause they checked their phones at the wrong time (MADE TO APOLOGIZE!). Sumo is kind of it's own little world.

kintamayama is great - another guy who translates a lot of that news is chris gould - his channel is here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIk5AQ47TYq8PQRoeM47LqQ

"Match fixing is so common in combat sports we might as well embrace it by now and figure out how to reward people for the best match fixing.

Or just watch pro wrestling."

yep - any combat sport between two people is incredibly easy to fix. if you think MMA isn't fixed i got news for ya champ

and pro wrestling started back at the turn of the century when shoot wrestling matches lasted for hours, bored the audience, and usually injured both participants to the point where they couldn't earn money for a significant amount of time afterwards. the wrestlers figured out how to make more money and not nearly kill themselves in the process, and that slowly morphed into the pro wrestling we know today

That's been happening when I ejaculate lately... Guess I'm a sumo wrestler