Roy Sims walked into his brother’s home and immediately knew something was wrong. It was Sept. 4, 2014, and Sims went to check on his brother, Cal, who was dead at the age of 30.
“I could tell right away he was dead,” said Sims, a 2000 San Benito High graduate who played football at Fresno State, Gavilan and Washburn University in Kansas. “(The cause of death) is still pretty inconclusive at this point. He had some health problems. It felt like a huge failure of mine because I couldn’t save him, couldn’t protect him. It had been at least four or five hours and at that point you can tell someone has passed. I wrapped him up in his blanket, sat by his bed and started talking to him. I wanted to make sure he knew how much I loved him.”
Sixteen days after his brother’s death, Sims, 33, won a bronze medal in the heavyweight division at the U.S. Sumo Open in Long Beach, one of the biggest surprises in the tournament considering Sims was competing in his first-ever tournament in a division that had two world champions in the field.
“I wanted to win a medal for my brother and honor him in his passing,” said Sims, who is scheduled to compete in the U.S. Nationals in Missouri June 13-15. “I could hear his voice saying, ‘Go and do it, do something good.’”
The 6-foot-5, 350-pound Sims did just that, finishing 4-2 in the U.S. Open, with his only two defeats coming to Mongolia’s Byambajav Ulambayar, a world champion.
So how did Sims, who only got introduced to the sport a month prior to the U.S. Sumo Open, manage a third-place finish against world-class competition?
By using all of the skills he’s learned from competing in other sports over the years and combining that with an insatiable appetite to compete.
“Coming into the competition, I didn’t know what to expect obviously,” said Sims, who is one of only two players from San Benito High in the last 21 years to go straight to a Division I football program on scholarship. “I felt like I could do well, and my expectations definitely increased after my first couple of matches. It was an intense experience, doing something new in an official capacity.”
In sumo, most matches are decided within the first 10 to 15 seconds. Wrestlers win by pushing their opponent out of the circle or when they make any part of their opponent’s body—other than the feet—touch the ground. Wrestlers cannot hit with an open fist or choke an opponent (although pushing at the throat is legal) and they cannot grab their opponent’s mawashi in the crotch area.
The mawashi is the belt worn by the competitors, and the best wrestlers know how to grab the opponent’s belt and force them out of the ring. Premier sumo wrestlers also are very technically sound, meaning they can get low, gain leverage and push their opponent out of the ring in an instant.
As Sims gains more experience in sumo, he’ll have a greater understanding of how to use the belt to his advantage.
“The mawashi is one of those things I’m not super great at yet in using it for my benefit,” Sims said. “It’s a different feel and it’ll take time where I can use it most effectively against my opponents.”
Sims entered the U.S. Sumo Open at 375 pounds, but he said he’s lost 25 pounds since he’s ramped up his training. If Sims is victorious in the U.S. Nationals, he’ll earn a coveted spot on the national team.
That would make him eligible to compete in the Sumo Championships in Japan, the 2017 World Games in Poland and the 2017 World Combat Games in Peru.
Although the stereotype still exists that sumo wrestlers are simply overweight and out of shape, one only has to look at Sims and realize it’s an outdated generalization.
Sims possesses tremendous strength and agility for any athlete, let alone one of his size. However, Sims is going up against some wrestlers who are more experienced and even bigger than he is, which makes technique paramount.
Sims knows he has to get low, use his head to push an opponent out of the circle and utilize the mawashi as an offensive weapon.
“There’s a saying that says you don’t fear the man who has done 10,000 different kicks, but you fear the man who has done one kick 10,000 times,” he said. “I need to perfect my technique and have one focus and do it over and over again.”
Sims went to Los Angeles two weekends ago to train with a sumo world champion, a session that was set up by the U.S. Sumo National coaches. Sims has made waves in the sport, a result of being new and performing well at a strong competition like the U.S. Open.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sims had a splashy debut in sumo, as he’s excelled in pretty much every sport he’s competed in the past. In addition to playing defensive tackle in college football, Sims also wrestled at San Benito and started training in ju-jitsu starting in his 20s.
Last August, while in a conversation with friend Nick Ravella, Sims realized he had an itch to compete once again at a high level—he just didn’t know which sport.
Due to his size, Sims figured sumo would be a nice fit. From there, Sims did some research on the sport, and was ecstatic to find out the U.S. Sumo Open was upcoming.
Sims sent U.S. Sumo organizers an email, received a prompt reply and started training immediately. Two weeks later, his brother died.
“Training wasn’t necessarily the No. 1 thing on my mind at that point,” Sims said. “But I still wanted to compete because I felt like I could win a medal for my brother and honor him in his passing.”
And that’s exactly what Sims did.
