Most combat sports make you wait a little for the violence. Boxing gives you a few rounds. MMA gives you a feeling-out minute. Sumo makes you wait so long that you forget you came to watch two men touch, and then it gives you about four seconds, and then it sends everyone home.
The lead-up is a full production. Salt gets flung across the ring to purify it, fistfuls of it, arcing through the air like a man seasoning the largest steak ever conceived. The legs come up one at a time and slam down in the shiko stomp, deliberate, enormous, the most committed warning a body can issue before doing absolutely nothing yet. There is a towel. There is water. There is a long squat where two men crouch at arm's length and stare into each other with the focused hatred of people who have not yet been introduced.
Then they stand back up. Did not touch. They walk to their corners, fling more salt, return, squat again, and resume the staredown like the first one did not take. This is the false start, except nobody is penalized, because the staring is load-bearing. A sumo bout has more reset attempts than a video game. They will do this three or four times. Somewhere a clock is running and the clock is the only thing in the building that is in a hurry.
And then it happens. The instant both fists hit the clay it is on, and the charge is genuinely terrifying, two of the strongest humans alive launching off the line with a force that would put an average man into a wall and a coma. The clay shakes. The slap of the collision is real. One of them gets shoved, gets pivoted, plants a heel, fights for a half second on the edge of the ring, and steps a single toe across the line.
That is the match. The toe did it. Four minutes of liturgy resolved by one centimeter of foot, and the wrestler who lost is already bowing, dignified, topknot intact, having spent more time throwing salt than competing. You blinked at the wrong moment and you have to wait for the replay.