Meet the world’s skinniest sumo wrestler

Takanoyama Shuntaro, aka Pavel Bojar, is an incredibly rare athlete a top tier sumo in Japan who weighs in at less than 100 kilograms.

Pavel Bojar is a Czech sumo wrestler. Source: Supplied

TAKANOYAMA Shuntaro is not a stereotypical sumo wrestler.

For a start, he's not Japanese. Shuntaro, whose real name is Pavel Bojar, was born in the Czech Republic, which is strangely passionate about sumo.

He's also far thinner and lighter than his competitors, who tend to weigh about 150kg. Bojar is 98kg of pure muscle.

That's Pavel Bojar on the left. Source: Getty Images

The 31-year-old discovered sumo after practising another Japanese martial art, judo, as a teenager. In 2000, within a year of his entry into the sport, Bojar won the bronze medal at the Junior World Sumo Championships. Then he travelled to Japan to compete at the most challenging levels of the sport.

"Westerners who come to train in Japan need to know that they're going to go twice as hard on you as they normally go," Harley Flanagan, another Westerner who made the trip, tells NPR .

"No matter what they say, not getting seriously hurt when you're doing anything with super-athletic guys that weigh more than 400 pounds (181kg) is a real skill."

Bojar competes with another wrestler in Japan. Source: Getty Images

Bojar has been in Japan ever since, trying to work his way up the pecking order. In 2011, he finally broke through to Makuuchi, the highest division of sumo wrestling, becoming one of just 42 men at that level.

MORE: The push for sumo wrestling glory

Because he's so small compared to the other wrestlers, Bojar has developed a rather unique style, relying on "throws" to defeat his opponents. This clip shows him in action.

Bojar has struggled over the last two years, losing often and fluctuating between the sport's second and third divisions. In November of 2011, he was reprimanded for injecting himself with insulin, apparently in an effort to gain weight.

Regardless, he remains an extremely rare specimen in sumo wrestling — a thin, muscular foreigner.

"If the spectators are happy then that's enough for me," Bojar told The Mainichi Daily News in 2011. "Whether I win or lose, I'll just keep trying to perform good sumo."

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