TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Twenty-two years after his uncle approached the same challenge, ozeki Hoshoryu heads into January's New Year Grand Sumo Tournament with a shot at promotion to the sport's highest rank.

Asashoryu won 25 career grand sumo tournaments, the fourth most on the all-time list, and clinched promotion as the first yokozuna from Mongolia at 2003's January meet. And though his 25-year-old nephew is rightly impressed, the ozeki's focus was on doing things his way.

"I always saw him as my uncle rather than as a yokozuna," Hoshoryu said Tuesday. "But thinking of it now, what he did was simply amazing. Yet, more than wanting to be someone like him, I want to be my own best self."

Still carrying lingering fatigue from the Japan Sumo Association's winter tour, which concluded Saturday, Hoshoryu resumed training and won 14 of 17 bouts against a juryo-division wrestler at his Tatsunami stable in Tokyo.

In November, Hoshoryu missed a shot at his second career championship when he lost the winner-take-all final bout of the Kyushu tourney to fellow ozeki Kotozakura, who is also in line for promotion to the sport's summit.

To take the final step to yokozuna, a candidate needs to either win a tournament or deliver a championship-caliber performance. Two wrestlers have not been promoted at the same time since Kitanofuji and Tamanoumi in 1970.

But making history, the ozeki said, is not his goal at the moment.

"I want to stay focused on my kind of sumo without thinking about things like yokozuna promotion," Hoshoryu said. "First and foremost, I want to do things my way."