Background
Musōyama was interested in sumo from a young age, as his father was the director of the Ibaraki Prefecture sumo association.
Musōyama was interested in sumo from a young age, as his father was the director of the Ibaraki Prefecture sumo association.
He retired in 2004. He is now the head coach of Fujishima stable. He breezed through makushita undefeated with two consecutive 7-0 scores to earn promotion to the second jūryō division, and he made his debut in the top makuuchi division in September 1993. lieutenant took him only seven tournaments from his professional debut to make the san"yaku ranks, debuting at sekiwake in March 1994.
Over the next few years he was regularly ranked at either sekiwake or komusubi, but was unable to make the next step up.
He suffered a number of injuries, including a dislocated shoulder and a persistent problem with his left big toe which affected his speed of movement. He followed up with a 12-3 score in March, his second runner-up performance, which earned him promotion to ōzeki.
He missed the whole of his debut ōzeki tournament through injury and could manage only a 4-11 record on his return, resulting in demotion back to sekiwake. However he scored ten wins in the September 2000 tournament, which immediately restored him to ōzeki status.
His time at ōzeki was bedeviled by further injuries which meant he was often merely struggling to maintain his rank instead of challenging for tournament championships and further promotion.
On the 6th day of the May 2001 tournament he had a match with Kotomitsuki that lasted a total of nine minutes and 17 seconds. After two breaks, the match was eventually called off and rescheduled for later in the day, the first time this had happened in the top division since 1978. Musōyama lost the rearranged match.
The last tournament in which he managed a score in double figures was in July 2003.
After pulling out of the September 2004 tournament with only two wins he lost his first three matches in November and announced his retirement, at the age of 32. Musōyama remained in sumo as a coach at his stable, Musashigawa, and is now known as Fujishima-oyakata.
He has also worked as a shinpan or judge of tournament bouts. In September 2010 he took over as the head coach and changed its name to Fujishima stable.
He was mainly a oshi-sumo wrestler, preferring pushing and thrusting techniques.
His most common winning kimarite was oshi-dashi, a simple push out. However, he was also capable of fighting on the mawashi, his favoured grip being hidari-yotsu (right hand outside, left hand inside).