Mongolian Asashōryū in his first tournament as a yokozuna in March 2003. He also defeated Asashōryū and Musashimaru whilst ranked in san'yaku. He made his sekiwake debut in July 2003 but did not achieve a kachi-koshi or winning score in his three attempts at the rank. On 28 April 2007 he caused a car accident in Tokyo. He was punished for defying the Japan Sumo Association's ban on wrestlers driving cars by being forced to sit out the May tournament, resulting in demotion to the jūryō division. This broke a string of over 700 consecutive top division bouts dating from his re-entry into makuuchi in May 1999, the longest streak among active wrestlers. However, he won immediate promotion back to the top division with a 12-3 record in July. On his return to the top division in September he was runner-up to yokozuna Hakuhō, his first ever runner-up score in makuuchi. He was awarded his fifth Fighting Spirit prize. In March 2009 he was promoted to komusubi for the first time in 17 tournaments, and became the first former san'yaku wrestler since Mitoizumi in 1988 to drop to the jūryō division and make a return to the san'yaku ranks. He made komusubi once again in July 2009. Following the retirement of Kaiō in July 2011 Kyokutenhō became the longest serving member of the top division. It had been thought he would become head of Ōshima stable when Asahikuni reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty-five in April 2012, but Kyokutenhō was still comfortably ranked in the top division at the time, and active wrestlers are not permitted to become stablemasters. Instead he continued wrestling and transferred along with his colleagues to Tomozuna stable. In May 2012, in his first tournament for his new stable, he won his first Emperor's Cup by beating Tochiōzan in a playoff after both finished with 12-3 records. In this tournament, Kyokutenhō had been in professional sumo just over twenty years, and at 37 years and 8 months became the oldest wrestler to take his first top division championship in modern sumo history. He was also the first maegashira ranked wrestler to win a tournament since Kotomitsuki in 2001. Also, as Kyokutenhō had acquired Japanese citizenship, he was technically the first Japanese to win the championship since Tochiazuma in January 2006, although he will still be regarded as a 'foreign' champion in the Sumo Association's record