Dallas Sumo Club wants to come back to our neighborhood

Jonathan Flowers arrived at practice well over a year since he last heard the booming voices and hits to the mat in a makeshift dohyo ring, created with rope and duct tape, for the Dallas Sumo Club.

He says he joined after years of just working out individually, later playing rugby with some of the guys he worked out with at the time, but couldn’t always make it to those practices.

While reading the manga series Hinomaru Sumo, he drew the comparison of sumo wrestling to rugby as the two both use down and forward motions.

“And I’m like, this is Texas. There’s a sumo team somewhere,” Flowers says. “Lo and behold, I found Dallas Sumo Club in May of 2021, and I saw a cowboy hat (on the club graphics) and got hooked.”

For a good year and a half, Flowers says he was one of the main competitors and coaches of the club, but life got in the way and led him to stray.

“I had some stuff happening at the house. I met these guys, and they’re my people, even if I’ve not been here in years, they’re still like, ‘Hey, I’m glad to see you. Let’s go,’” he says. “We’re not the best on the planet. We’re not in the best shape, but we come in here, we do our thing.”

Corey Morrison and Siggy Sauer founded the club in January 2021, transitioning to a nonprofit in August 2022. As a cinematographer, Morrison says he was attracted to exploring sumo because of the aesthetics, tradition and culture.

“I really wanted to find somewhere where we could practice that kind of represented that more. We were in a small Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) gym with paper-thin walls that when our guys hit it … there’s a huge chance you’re going to go tumbling out of the ring and into the wall, and you’re just going to smash through that wall of cheap sheetrock,” he says. “So we’re like, ‘Why don’t we take it outside?’”

Outside happened to be at our Kidd Springs Park, which Morrison came across while working as a director of photography on a project.

“We found a little area right over by the Kidd Springs Recreation Center in the Japanese garden, just over this little bridge, and there was a big Ginkgo tree,” he says. “We started practicing under that. We had a lot of people join us for that. All the time, people in the mornings would just come, they’d be walking their dog or riding a bike or just jogging, and they’d be like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And they’d stop and watch us half-naked dudes beating the crap out of each other early in the morning.”

Morrison says the outdoor practices in Oak Cliff helped bring more exposure to sumo in Dallas.

“Sumo in the U.S. has had a huge problem catching steam. It is now, finally, but it’s had its ups and downs, and I think a lot of the reason of that was because it was always done in places where there was already existing martial arts like BJJ, karate, MMA, boxing, stuff like that. It was tucked away in those gyms, but (we are) doing it out in a public park where people could see it,” he says.

Other appearances around the Metroplex have helped bring in club members, which fluctuates numbers-wise depending on the season.

Rick Garza came across Dallas Sumo Club with his brother at a demonstration held at Rollertown Beer Works in 2022. The pair came for the release of a Japanese lager, but ended up in the ring themselves.

“So we’re there, watching them do the demo. Easily a few beers in. Finally, Corey is like, ‘Anybody think they can get in there and beat any of us? Just come sign the waiver,’” he says. “So me and my brother just looked at each other, didn’t say nothing and walked straight over there.”

Finding the club totally by accident, the siblings have a wrestling background that they were prepared to use, even if it had been years.

“I didn’t do anything until I joined the sumo club from high school until then. I mean, I would still work out here and there, but nothing as intense as this. This is very intense,” Garza says. “Even before, wrestling was pretty intense, but this is still a head-to-toe body workout. Your fingertips are tired at the end of practice. Toes are tired. It’s a great workout.”

Obed Centeno has been with the club for three years, having discovered the group after learning about their ties to a local anime convention.

He’s competed throughout Texas in San Antonio and Houston, along with Dallas, which has brought changes to his skill level and body.

“I have physically, it’s a workout,” Centeno says. “So, definitely weight loss, and also I never thought I’d be competing, so technique wise, also I’ve gotten better along the way … It’s fun, it’s all ages, shapes and sizes. It doesn’t matter if you’re 400 pounds versus 150 pounds, there’s no judgment here.”

The club not only competes locally, but has made strides with global appearances at the amateur level, sharing the name of Dallas Sumo. One of the women in the club, Mell Miranda, recently brought home a silver world medal from the team tournament portion of the World Sumo Championship in Thailand. Other club members have also made visits to the home of professional sumo in Japan.

However, for Dallas Sumo Club, the time at Kidd Springs was never the permanent home. The club ended up utilizing a facility in Arlington for just over a year before coming back to Oak Cliff and practicing out of Malicious Grounds.

Morrison described the wrestling and BJJ gym just off of South Cockrell Hill Road as dark and brooding, a wonderful place with concrete walls that eased their worries of smashing through. However, the gym shut down in July 2025. At the time, the club had been working on creating a traditional dohyo in the backyard of the gym.

To Morrison, Oak Cliff has always felt like Dallas Sumo Club’s home, and he says they hope to return one day. More recently, the group has practiced in more northern parts of Dallas, such as Tietze Park and Glencoe Park, but nothing that sticks like the former spot in the neighborhood.

“We want more people to join. We’re trying to expand American sumo as it is,” Garza says. “We’re trying to make it giant. Dallas Sumo Club, we want us to be the Dallas Cowboys of sumo.”