 Two poor performances of 5-10 and 4-11 saw him demoted to "makushita" for the first time since January 2009 after the November 2010 tournament, but he won promotion back to the "sekitori" ranks immediately.In September 2011 Tamaasuka was promoted back to "makuuchi" after scoring 8-7 at "jūryō" 1in the preceding July tournament.He thus became the second wrestler (after Wakanoyama) to twice achieve the feat of returning to "makuuchi" after dropping to "makushita".