e sport, in which the lower-ranked wrestlers, who make up the majority of sumo participants, make salaries below a living wage, may contribute to the use of match-fixing in order to prolong careers and assist in the distribution of promotions.^[25][26] In The Joy of Sumo: A Fan’s Notes (Charles E. Tuttle, 1991), David Benjamin determined that over a span of ten basho in the years 1989 and 1990, wrestlers who entered the final day with records of 7–7 emerged with an unlikely winning percentage of .813 (39–9). He offers further evidence of cheating in sumo, but his analysis of Day 15, “The Last-Day Blues”, represents the first effort to demonstrate statistically that rikishi almost certainly trade favors late in sumo tournaments to facilitate the all-important goal of kachi-koshi, having more wins than losses in a tournament.^[27] In 2002, Steven Levitt and Mark Duggan replicated and expanded upon Benjamin’s research, although not crediting The Joy of Sumo. They published a paper using econometrics in order to prove that corruption in sumo exists.^[28] Popularized in Levitt’s book Freakonomics, the study found that 70% of wrestlers with 7–7 records on the final day of the tournament (i.e., seven wins and seven losses, and one fight to go) won. The percentage was found to rise the more times the two wrestlers had met, and decrease when the wrestler was due to retire. The study found that the 7–7 wrestlers win around 80% of the time when statistics suggest they have a probability of winning only 48.7% of the time against their opponents. Like Benjamin, the authors conclude that those who already have 8 wins collude with those who are 7–7 and let them win, since the 8-win wrestlers have already secured their ranking. A possible counter-argument to the Freakonomics conclusion is that a 7–7 rikishi is highly motivated to win his last match to gain promotion, rather than demotion, while the 8–6 rikishi has already guaranteed his promotion, so is not as motivated. The authors revealed a more damning statistic, however. According to their research, the next tournament in which the two wrestlers met, there was a significant advantage to the 8–6 wrestler over the 7–7, regardless of the performance of either wrestler. The previously 7–7 wrestler would win only 40% percent of the rematches with the 8–6 wrestler. The authors suggest that winning 80% in the first match and then only 40% in the rematch (and back to the expected 50% in subsequent matches) between the same wrestlers suggests a rigging of the bouts. Additionally, the authors find that after allegations of rigging by the media, 7–7 wrestlers won only 50% of their matches against 8–6 wrestlers instead of 80%. When the former sumo wrestler Konoshin Suga, also known as Onaruto stablemaster, and his supporter Seiichiro Hashimoto came forward with allegations of match rigging, drug use, sexcapades, tax evasion, and close ties to the mafia, both were found dead in the same hospital, hours apart on April 14, 1996, though there was no proof of poisoning.^[29] Weekly tabloid Shukan Post alleged in a series of artic