Mon, Feb 02, 2026 page6

• Ireland’s first female sumo wrestler blazes a trail

  • AFP, BELFAST
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  Sweat darkened the white dohyo ring mat as Ireland’s first female sumo wrestler shoved and strained, learning a freshly-discovered sport. Having tried the centuries-old Japanese discipline out of curiosity, Toraigh Mallon, from Lisburn, Northern Ireland, trains alongside bulky and beefy men, relying on balance and grit rather than sheer size.

  During a coaching session ahead of the British Isles Sumo Championships in Belfast on Saturday, she paused between bouts to catch her breath.

  “It’s hard work, like moving wardrobes full of cement, but I try my best,” the 32-year-old mental health nurse said.

  

  Sumo wrestler Toraigh Mallon poses for a photograph during a training session in Belfast on Jan. 16.

  Photo: AFP

  Mark Christie, 39, one of six male wrestlers at the session, welcomed her involvement.

  “Women had less access to lots of sports in the past. It’s good that sport’s more open now,” he said.

  Mallon first turned up on a whim in February last year after seeing an Instagram advert for a new sumo club in Belfast, stepping into an unfamiliar world of ritual, grappling and close-contact combat.

  “It was me versus all the men, which was pretty intimidating yet empowering at the same time: You wouldn’t normally fight somebody who was male, but it’s good to be an underdog and beat them,” she said.

  Knowing nothing about sumo or Japanese culture, she was immediately smitten by its speed and simplicity: Force the opponent to touch the ground inside the dohyo ring, or out of it altogether.

  Having the thick white cotton mawashi sumo belt put on her for the first time “felt like a wedding dress fitting,” Mallon said.

  “Sumo’s fun, even if it is against mostly men, sort of like messing about with your siblings in the living room when you were a kid,” she added.

  In the past few weeks, a few other women have turned up to try their hand on the mat.

  “Until then I think I was the only female sumo wrestler on the island of Ireland, Irish champion by default,” Mallon said.

  However, with more women joining “now I’m going to have work a bit harder for that title.”

  Thanks to club founder and coach Johnny Templeton, Mallon says she has learned a lot about the sport’s roots in Shinto, the indigenous nature-oriented belief system of Japan.

  Its origins can be traced back about 2,000 years, and rituals such as purification, bowing and ring-entering ceremonies are woven into competition.

  Sumo’s links to Ireland started about 20 years ago with a wrestler named John Gunning who moved to Japan and turned professional, before becoming a famous English-language sumo pundit there, Templeton said.

  In late 2024, Templeton, the longtime combat sports fan, who took up sumo during a COVID-19 lockdown, set up the club in a Belfast jujutsu hall, adapting the space for the ancient sport and forming an Irish federation.

  Like the governing bodies of rugby, cricket, boxing and other sports, sumo in Ireland is organized on an all-island basis to include British territory Northern Ireland.

  Roots are spreading with clubs sprouting in Dublin, Cork and rural Northern Ireland as interest grows.

  However, almost all the wrestlers are men, so far, said 37-year-old Templeton, who represented Great Britain at a sumo world championships in Poland in 2024.

  “Women like Toraigh getting involved is amazing, because it’s something that isn’t even very common in Japan” where females are barred from competing professionally, he said.

  “Especially in Ireland, we find that the girls aren’t as interested as the boys, maybe shying away from it because of an idea that a sumo wrestler is not very ladylike,” he said. “But once they see someone like Toraigh and how fun it is, more girls will definitely try it out.”

  On Saturday Mallon competed for Team Ireland against three other women in her category — from England and Scotland — who joined about 60 wrestlers, including seven women, from around the UK and Ireland.

  It was her second major tournament after the Scottish Open in August last year.

  Despite losing all three bouts in her light heavyweight category in Belfast, she said she still enjoyed the experience.

  “The matches were all close, so I feel like I did the best I could, and learnt a lot,” she said.

  Although the exact numbers of women sumo wrestlers in Ireland and the UK are not known, Templeton said the increasingly popular sport offers exciting opportunities.

  “You can make it onto teams, win medals, and go travel to European and World Championships, now is the time to get involved,” he said.
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