Asashoryu in Fresh Controversy

A grim-faced Asashoryu appeared agitated when media asked him for comment on the incident.

Controversial grand champion Asashoryu is embroiled in a fresh tussle after photographers accused the wrestler of insulting them with rude language. The Mongolian, who is sumo's top-ranked wrestler, has long had a testy relationship with the Japanese media and athletic establishment, which have branded him as too brash for the ritual-laden sport.

Asashoryu, who returned to the ring in January after a half-year suspension, denied media allegations that he shouted, "Drop dead, bastard!" when photographers saw him at an airport this week.

A grim-faced Asashoryu appeared agitated when media asked him for comment on the incident.
"There's no way I would have said, 'Drop dead, bastard'! You understand?" Asashoryu said. "Are you satisfied? That's it," he said as he climbed into a car. But a photographer, Koichi Endo from the Tokyo Sports tabloid, insisted the wrestler made the remarks Monday as reporters waited for him to come up an escalator at Kansai airport near the western city of Osaka.

"I don't accept it," Endo said of Asashoryu's denial. "It suggests I'm a liar." Endo said he was "trying to be considerate" to Asashoryu, who was returning to Japan from his brother's wedding in Hawaii.
"I just said to him, 'You must be tired' as I pointed my camera. He turned to me and said, 'Drop dead, bastard!'," Endo told the Asahi television network in a telephone interview.

Tokyo Sports photo editor Keisuke Hosojima stood by the paper's account. "It is certain he said that. Photographers from other companies have also said so," Hosojima told AFP. Asashoryu may have been in a bad mood because he was spotted at the Honolulu airport wearing an aloha shirt and shorts, violating sumo tradition that wrestlers wear only traditional kimonos in public.

He changed into a kimono when he got off the plane in Japan. Asashoryu, 27, whose name means "morning blue dragon," is the fifth-ranked wrestler in sumo history. He was handed a ban after infuriating the sumo authority in July. He had skipped a regional exhibition tour citing injuries but was then caught on camera cheerfully playing a charity football match in Mongolia.