Colorado State Football Adds Crazy Flexible, Impressively Fast Japanese Sumo Champion To Defensive Line

"Low man wins" is one of the fundamental ideologies of football, and few people know how to implement that principle like Colorado State's newest defensive lineman, Hidetora Hanada. The Japanese-native will join the Rams as a junior and will have two seasons of college football eligibility left.

He announced the commitment last week.

This fall will mark just the second year playing the sport for Hanada. His background is not in football, but in sumo wrestling — where the low man also wins.

Hanada started practicing sumo as a child. By the time he was in the second grade, he had already become a youth sumo champion.

The dominance continued and Hanada became the world junior champion in his sophomore and senior years of high school. And then he won the national amateur sumo championship as a 19-year-old freshman at Nippon Sport Science University in 2020.

Hanada had a very bright future in sumo. There was a lot of buzz around his ability to become one of the all-time greats.

However, Hanada had always yearned to play football. So he did!

Hidetora Hanada has NFL dreams.

His first action on the gridiron took place at the Japanese X League team tryouts in March 2022. Hanada turned heads right away and his football development has been on an upward trajectory ever since.

Hanada joined the two-time X League national champion Fujitsu Frontiers as a practice squad player in May 2022 and never fails to impress. So much so that he received an invitation to the CFL Combine in Edmonton earlier this year.

There were quite a few scouts in attendance and they all took notice of Hanada. It was hard not to.

Offensive linemen could not figure him out.

Hidetora Hanada had a field day.

He also threw up 26 reps on the bench press.

And he ran a 5.03-second 40-yard-dash!

His flexibility, as a sumo champion, is another impressive quality.

via @torajiro.hanada/Instagram

As a result of his strong tryout, Hanada garnered interest from multiple FBS programs including Ohio State and Texas. His grind never stopped.

Now, four months later, Hanada has his future figured out. The 6-foot-1, 286-pound former sumo champion is headed to Colorado State to bolster a defensive line that is in need of help.

Jay Norvell's team won just three games in his first year. The Rams will open the 2023 season at home against Washington State on Sept. 2.

Hidetora Hanada will arrive in the U.S. ahead of fall camp in a few weeks. Despite his inexperience, there is hope that he could step right into a significant depth or rotational role right away. Low man wins!