Sure, it might be hard to find exactly where to draw the line between good old-fashioned discipline and ladle-based drubbing when you’re a sumo wrestler. But ignorance is no defense, Toyozakura. From news services (and passed along by Don S.):

A veteran sumo wrestler who attacked a junior grappler with a cooking instrument has been ordered to take a salary cut for his violent outburst.

Toyozakura, whose ladle-wielding assault left the 18-year-old victim bleeding and needing eight stitches, will take a 30 percent pay cut for three months, Japanese sumo officials said on Thursday.

The same punishment was meted out to gym chief Magaki for beating a junior wrestler with a bamboo sword in the latest in a series of incidents that has tarnished sumo’s image.

Toyozakura, 34, apologized after admitting he used a ladle to hit the apprentice on the head.

“I asked him to do something, which I don’t remember exactly, but he couldn’t do it,” Toyozakura said, according to Agence France-Presse.

We understand sumo is trying to clean up its act, but we do have to say that this sort of punishment would never fly in U.S. sports. Here, the more you screw up, the more lucrative your contract is, and the more you can go off on profanity-laced tirades after miracle comeback losses.

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