is a Japanese sports manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 series written and illustrated by Tetsuya Chiba

Tetsuya Chiba

is a Japanese manga artist famous for his sports stories.He was born in Tokyo, Japan, but lived most of his early childhood in Manchuria when it was still a Japanese colony during the Second Sino-Japanese War. His father was working in a paper factory during that time they lived in China. One of...

 about sumo wrestling. It was serialized by Shogakukan

Shogakukan

is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, manga, non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan.Shogakukan founded Shueisha which founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hitotsubashi Group, one of the largest publishing groups in Japan...

 in Big Comic

Big Comic

is a semimonthly seinen manga magazine published since 1968-02-29 by Shogakukan in Japan. It was originally launched as a monthly magazine, but switched to twice monthly on the 10th and 25th beginning in April 1968. It is paired with sister magazine Big Comic Original, going on sale in the weeks...

from August 1973 to June 1993, then after a hiatus it returned from October 1995 to March 1998. Notari Matsutaro received the 1978 Shogakukan Manga Award

Shogakukan Manga Award

The is one of Japan's major manga awards, sponsored by Shogakukan Publishing. It has been awarded annually for serialized manga since 1955 and features candidates from a number of publishers.The current award categories are:...

 for seinen

Seinen

is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at a 20–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be older with some manga aimed at businessmen well into their 40s. In Japanese, the word Seinen means "young man" or "young men" and is not suggestive of sexual matters...

/general manga.

It was adapted as a series of ten Original Video Animations (OVAs) released between November 22, 1990 and April 25, 1991.