Looking Down is Round 917 of Jōji Morikawa's Hajime no Ippo manga series.
Details
- Characters Introduced: Moriyama Coach
- Title Page Character(s): Ippo Makunouchi, Manabu Itagaki, Masaru Aoki, Tatsuya Kimura, Haruhiko Yagi, Shinoda, Genji Kamogawa
Summary
At the Kamogawa gym, Kamogawa, Yagi, and Shinoda gives the gym members an overview of the upcoming matches, with Takamura's fourth WBC world middleweight title defence match and Ippo's eighth JBC featherweight title defence match in October and in November it will be the Class A Tournament finals. While doing roadwork with Aoki, Kimura, and Itagaki, Ippo wonders why Kojima would go two weight classes down to fight him, Kimura mentions that Kojima is looking down on him, thinking that his toughness and power from the lightweights would let him handle Ippo easily. Aoki gives his prediction that, despite knowing how strong Kojima is, Ippo will win. At the Kawahara gym, Miyata and Kojima spar against each other. The spar gets stopped by Kojima's coach as he doesn't want Kojima to get hurt anymore in the one-sided spar. After Kojima thanks Miyata, Miyata criticises how slow he was to keep up with him, commenting that he is underestimating Ippo. Kojima figures that Ippo will just stand right in front of him, however, Miyata notes how he is wrong to think he could win in a slugfest because of his bigger body, as Ippo will land two or three punches before he lands one, and his only chance of winning is in the early rounds when he has his strength and stamina, where landing a strong body blow on Ippo will give him the stamina advantage. Before Kojima leaves, he asks Miyata what will happen if he lands the body blow, however, Miyata can't answer, leading Kojima to claim that Miyata would make the same mistake as Sendō and the other fighters. Miyata's father wonders what Kojima means, but Miyata doesn't know, and mentions that it has nothing to do with him anymore anyway. Walking away from the Kawahara gym, he is asked by his coach if he knows how he will hit Ippo, since he is fast in his own way, to which Kojima answers that he picked Ippo for a good reason. Later, Ippo does roadwork with Kamogawa, who is on his scooter. Kamogawa instructs him to keep his upper body moving, don't give Kojima a target, and keep all his punches sharp and compact. Kamogawa further instructs him to not drop his guard under any circumstances so that Kojima doesn't land a direct hit or trade blows with him.
| World Contender | |||||||||||||||||||
| Blind Step | |||||||||||||||||||
| Manga Volumes | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95 | 96 | 97 | |||||||||||||||||
| Manga Rounds | |||||||||||||||||||
| 913 | 914 | 915 | 916 | 917 | 918 | 919 | 920 | 921 | 922 | ||||||||||
| 923 | 924 | 925 | 926 | 927 | 928 | 929 | 930 | 931 | 932 | ||||||||||
| 933 | 934 | 935 | 936 | 937 | 968 | 939 | 940 | 941 | |||||||||||