Yoko Ono retires

Yoko Ono, 32, has just announced her retirement from competition. Interestingly, at 5th place in the IJF World Rankings, she is ranked higher than her compatriots Saki Niizoe (9th) and Shiho Tanaka (19th). Ono is one of the most stylish players in world judo.

Both Niizoe and Tanaka fought in the recent 2022 Tashkent World Championships. Ono had placed third in the All-Japan Weight Class Championships, which serve as a kind of trials for the World’s, and thus she was not chosen for Tashkent.

Ono began her international competition career at the 2011 Prague World Cup where she did not place. Her first major international victory came much later in 2016 at the Asian Championships in Tashkent.

Her momentum continued into 2017, where she emerged victor at the European Open in Oberwart, the Asian Championships in Hong Kong, and the Tokyo Grand Slam.

During her long career, Ono amassed six IJF World Tour gold medals. Perhaps her greatest accomplishment was getting silver at the 2021 World Championships in Budapest.

Ono’s favorite throw is uchimata but she also has a very dynamic standing ippon-seoi-nage that would have made Toshihiko Koga proud.

Like most Japanese female players, she is excellent on the ground. She has a very distinctive osaekomi turnover that is a play on the standard hara-zutsumi technique that many Japanese female players like to do.

Whereas the traditional hara-zutsumi entails tori pulling the jacket skirt across uke’s belly, Ono pulls the jacket skirt in between uke’s leg for a really very unusual turnover that often leaves her opponents clueless to what she’s doing.