Andrew Freund knows he’s up against the big American sports of baseball, football and basketball. But Freund has something bigger: sumo wrestlers.
As director of the California Sumo Association, Freund has thrown his weight behind selling the Japanese national sport to American audiences.
On Oct. 9, he’ll face a Jewish audience as he presents a live sumo demonstration at the 19th annual Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival. The event is sponsored by Tesla Motors and UBS.
Then, the next day at Palo Alto’s To Life! Jewish street festival, the wrestlers will repeat the demonstration at noon on the Jessica Saal Memorial main stage. They will also turn into hawkers, passing out brochures for the film fest from its booth at the street fair.
Odd as it seems at first glance, the live sumo demonstration ties in with the festival’s opening night screening of “A Matter of Size,” the 2009 comedy about a group of misfit amateur Israeli sumo wrestlers.
That film emerged as one of the most popular Israeli screen offerings in recent years, having won three Israeli Academy Awards. A romantic comedy, it depicts the lives of a four overweight Israeli men who decide to put their girth to good use in the dohyo, or sumo ring.
Freund will bring a portable dohyo to the stage of the De Anza Visual and Performing Arts Center in Cupertino. He’s also bringing top wrestlers, including three-time world champion Byamba.
“People will be surprised not just by their size,” Freund says, “but the speed and flexibility will be astonishing to people. At 350 pounds, Byamba can do a full leg split like a ballerina.”
The only pas de deux at the demo will consist of two men, with a combined weight approaching half a ton, crashing into each other. Their goal: push the other guy out of the ring.
“The guys will demonstrate different techniques, the rules, violations, and then a series of matches,” Freund adds. “The most fun part will be a limited number of audience members may come up on stage and challenge the world champion.”
Byamba grew up in Mongolia before moving to Japan to train, and now lives in Los Angeles. Through a translator, he explains that exposing sumo to the uninitiated is an important part of his job.
“Plenty of people don’t know about the sport,” he says, “but they pick up on it very quickly. Sumo is not just two big guys colliding. There is a lot of technique and subtle moves.”
Freund, who claims some Jewish ancestry, doesn’t have the training for those moves. Still, he has loved sumo enough to have lived in Japan, learned the language and then returned to L.A. to launch a sumo club.
“We turned it into the largest, most active sumo club in the country,” he says. “Every year we produce the U.S. Sumo Open, the largest annual sumo competition in the world outside of Japan.”
Although Byamba has not yet seen “A Matter of Size,” Freund has, and thinks it has done much to advance sumo in Israel and beyond.
“Aside from the sumo aspect, the script and cinematography are awesome,” he says. “It’s inspirational.”
Byamba visited Israel three years ago to participate in various sumo events. He had a fine time in Tel Aviv, noting that “the ocean was beautiful, and the food was great.”
Growing up in Mongolia, he had no exposure to Jews, but did learn about the Holocaust. As a young teen, Byamba became a black belt in judo. That’s when he was recruited to attend a sumo training center in Japan.
With his parents’ blessing, he made the move, and undertook the grueling process of becoming a professional sumo wrestler.
“After my first few years, I visited my parents,” recalls Byamba. “My parents were crying because I was covered with bruises. ‘What kind of place are you in?’ they asked me. I said, ‘That’s just sumo.’ ”
The 19th annual Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival’s sumo demonstration and screening of “A Matter of Size” take place starting at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, at the De Anza Visual and Performing Arts Center, 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino. Tickets: $35-$38. Information: (800) 838-3006 or www.svjff.org. The sumo demonstration also will take place 12:10 to 12:30 p.m. on the Jessica Saal Memorial stage at the To Life! festival.