Sumo giant weighty challenge for Torrens

It was a David and Goliath encounter at the Easter Show yesterday as 6-year-old Torrens Parsons stepped out of the audience to square off against sumo wrestler Emanuel Yarbrough.

Luckily for Torrens he didn't have to toss the American giant off the mat: that would have been a feat beyond even David.

"I'm six foot seven inches. I don't know what that is in centimetres ... I'm 320 kilograms. That means a lot. It's over, like, 700 pounds," says Yarbrough.

The man-mountain from New Jersey is a few kilos short of the entire All Black front row. The combination of Carl Hoeft (113kg), Anton Oliver (112kg) and Kees Meeuws (121kg) tips the scale at 346kg.

Yarbrough, the former world sumo champion, is just over 2m tall and is said to be the world's largest athlete. He is on his third visit to New Zealand.

As well as sitting in on the last day of the National Sumo Championships at the Easter Show, he expects to put in some appearances at pubs and restaurants, but hopes to go fishing and visit a marae again.

"I enjoy the country and I enjoy the people."

New Zealand's Maori and Pacific Island cultures are reasons he likes coming back.

"Growing up culturally devoid, it's good to see people embrace their own culture. I feel somewhat culturally deprived. I cannot, like the Samoans and Tongans can, make references to my direct ancestors. With sumo, the catch for me was the spirituality attached to the sport."

Yarbrough, aged 35, says it is tradition, before a fight, for sumo wrestlers to make signs to the gods that they are not bearing weapons, and its famous stomping ritual is to keep evil underfoot.

While sumo is all about fighting, wrestlers do not set out to injure their opponents.

The Japanese originators of sumo, he says, were known for their reliance on colliding with opponents, but since it gained an international following a sumo science has evolved.

"Myself, being big and strong, I use my size and strength, while someone smaller will use speed and technique."

Between bouts he is approached by children and adults for photographs. A few fearful-looking toddlers stay well clear.

Yarbrough acknowledges that some people gawp at him.

"People are people and people are going to do what people do ... I am a large man and that is the way I am."