Trucker Life · Illinois · November 10, 2026

Chicago Truck Driver, 51, Makes His Pro Sumo Debut

Illustration of a delivery driver moving plain sacks from an orange box truck in a wet brick city alley — Illustration for this story. Not a photo of a specific location.

Image caption: Illustration: AI-generated illustration, not a photo of the people, vehicles or places in this story. It shows a delivery driver moving plain sacks from an orange box truck in a wet brick city alley.

Rupert Cintron, a 51-year-old Chicago-area truck driver, stepped into a professional sumo ring for the first time over the weekend, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He wrestles as "the Chicago Silverback," and he was the only wrestler from the Chicago area competing Saturday night.

"It's just an opportunity at my age to be able to do something like this," Cintron told the paper before his first pro match. "I'm 51 years old, and I'm about to get out there with these kids, and, you know, it's just cool."

Strength from the delivery route

Cintron stands 5 feet 10 inches and weighs 260 pounds. He has not worked out in a gym in seven years, the Sun-Times reports. His workout is his job. Every day, he moves about 11,000 pounds of flour, beef and other supplies from his truck into the basements of Chicago restaurants. Before that, he worked as a mover, and he played 11 years of semipro football in the Chicago area.

"People tell me I have that dad strength. That old strength," he said.

The nickname came from home. "My wife and family always say 'You're like a big gorilla.' Plus I'm getting old, got the gray hair going, got a little silver on the back," he told the paper. Cintron lives in Elgin with his wife, Lela, his high school sweetheart, and they have four kids.

A new American league

Cintron began wrestling only two years ago. He is a mainstay of the Chicago Sumo Club, which practices every Sunday. Saturday's event at Credit Union 1 Arena was the second stop on the inaugural tour of the Sumo Championship League, a new league not affiliated with professional sumo in Japan. It was founded by Stuart Snyder, a former president of Cartoon Network and World Wrestling Entertainment. "But the sumo is pure sumo," Snyder said.

Wrestlers in the new league come in a range of sizes, from 200 pounds to 450 pounds, and the top wrestler at each event wins $10,000, the paper reports.

Three bouts, three losses

When Cintron was announced, the hometown crowd cheered. He lost all three of his matches. He slipped in the first, was pushed out of the ring in the second and, in the third, took his opponent down but touched the floor first. The Sun-Times reports the result means he probably will not be invited to the league's next events.

Every time he looked at his family, he saw his daughter, Raven, 22, holding a sign that read "Build some calluses." It was a nod to what he told his kids growing up: "You're building calluses to make yourself stronger."

"Just to feel sumo at that level and put on a show, it was awesome," Cintron said the next morning on his way to practice. "It's like life never ends if you don't let the dream end," he said earlier. He hopes to come back as an alternate.

Plenty of truckers find second acts later in life. Big Rig Daily's guide to getting a CDL after 50 looks at another one.