Larger than life: Sumo wrestler ‘signs’ autographs with palm print (VIDEO)

5 Dec, 2018 13:25 / Updated 6 years ago

What do you do when your hand is twice the size of a normal person’s? You sign autographs with a palm print, of course.

A sometimes overlooked aspect of a professional athlete’s life is the amount of selfies and autographs they get asked for on a daily basis.

The sheer size of sumo wrestlers, along with their occasional difficulty with legible penmanship, can make signing autographs more of a chore than anything - which is why a ‘tegata’, or palm print, has become the most popular piece of sumo wrestler merch.

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And judging by the video below which shows the popular Takayasu Akira working a tegata assembly line, some of them have the practice down to a fine art.

Per reports online, some sumo wrestlers can get through as many as 1,500 of these palm prints in a sitting - and we imagine that can translate to a whole lot of eBay dollars.

Akira isn't alone in his quick-handed method either, as it seems that many of his peers have also perfected the technique to a fine art.

Suddenly, E Honda's 'hundred hand slap' in the Street Fighter video game franchise makes a whole lot more sense.