Itagaki devoted the entire Ali Jr arc to basically wanking off the idea that boxing could never beat MMA, and hes now doing an arc about how fucking sumo would beat MMA.
I think keisuke just wants everybody to like and appreciate sumo because he probably just got into it too. I still don't see how anybody in this arc will be able to pose a serious threat to baki in the way pickle and musashi did. Weak follow up tbh so far
I always thought stuff like this and Hinomaru was part of some kind of national push to revive sumo's fortunes, specifically to get more ethnic Japanese as champion rather than Mongolians.