Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
The side of Ippo you do not want to face.
- The Dempsey Roll is awesome, but the anime adds an extra edge to it: sounding like Ippo's muscles are moving akin to jet engines, and each and every one of his punches like a cannonball striking. It takes the Signature Move from being an awe-inspiring technique, to turning Ippo's body into something that seems more like a goddamn storm on human legs that devastates whatever's in his path.
- Hawk's red eyes... just... his red eyes.
- In all seriousness, Bryan himself is perhaps one of the scariest characters, due to his animalistic insanity.
- Bryan as a whole is terrifying for multiple reasons- his style is anything but orthodox. It's not even boxing. It can really only be described as the kind of fighting a man would engage in during a life-or-death struggle, swaying around to avoid being hit and flailing his fists out at every angle, and using as much power as possible behind his swings. In a way it can be compared to a rabid chimpanzee attack, completely random and off-kilter where there's really no way to defend yourself but to run; and while the style does have its weaknesses, they aren't critical enough that they can be exploited. And he does all this with an insane grin, sometimes a sadistic laugh... and those goddamn horrifying red eyes. That's not the worst part about it, though. What's really terrifying is that when he's really into it, beating his opponent into a pulp, he gets sexually aroused from it, sporting a visible erection under his trunks. During his bout with Takamura, he even says he's going to cum from it. Everything about his boxing and his attitude is demented and fucked up.
- And the name of his "style"? "Pure Violence."
- Mashiba is scary enough out of the ring, but when he really snaps you don't want to be in the ring with him.
- The fight between Sawamura and Mashiba has to be, bar none, one of the most bloody matches of this entire manga. The warning flags start waving during the weigh-in, where Mashiba comments, while not even looking at Sawamura, that Ippo did a half-ass job of sending him to the hospital and that he's planning on sending Sawamura to the grave...and a grinning Ryuhei answers in kind. The match itself starts out relatively tame, if very intense, the two of them exchanging blows without able to get a clean hit for two rounds...until Sawamura's patience runs out and he backhands Mashiba. The referee proceeds to lay into him about that...only for Mashiba to hit Sawamura while the referee was talking to him. The poor guy's warnings to Mashiba fall on deaf ears, and he only barely manages to duck out of the way as the two boxers proceed to mangle each other with no restraint.
- And another one in chapter 912 is a bit more disturbing, coming from Itagaki of all people…
- While not outright terrifying, Ippo's one shot K.O against Kojima is chill-inducing. He takes the brutal counter, and you think he's going to go down...but he doesn't. And he comes back with a vengeance. A bone-shattering, rage-induced, career ending vengeance.
- In fact, Kojima himself would also fit into this topic if you put your mind to it: He possessed one of the greatest knockout powers in the category of the work itself, to the point that his blows were compared to a two-ton truck at high speed. Not to mention that, during his time as the JBC's top featherweight contender, he broke his own hand twice while fighting for a shot at the title. If Ippo wasn't tough enough, that dry punch Kojima landed on his temple could knock out any fighter in his place.
- Chapter 1243 has an enraged Ippo take out his seething anger and sorrow on Taihei with a palm-strike slap to the face. Not only do we get a two-page cut of Ippo's Nightmare Face unlike anything else in the series, but the resulting blow knocks a high-schooler several meters away, unconscious on contact and bleeding from his nose and mouth. Umezawa's immediate reaction is checking if Taihei wasn't instantly killed by the blow, and Ippo suffers a major Heroic BSoD and My God, What Have I Done? moment upon realizing he struck a minor with near-lethal force only a former Japanese champion like himself can put out, ready to turn himself into the authorities over the incident.
- Taihei's face of utter agony he felt from Ippo's slap is just as unnerving to look at as well.
- Two chapters later and we find out that Taihei didn't submit a report to the police because he remembers that Nightmare Face - and nothing else. He can't even remember what happened because that slap gave him memory damage. The only other time this happened was against Kojima Hisato, who managed to piss off Ippo enough to give him a a single punch to the face so hard the man couldn't remember anything of the fight. All this shows that for his combat capability in the ring, Ippo has been severely restraining himself all series long from devastating any foe he comes across, all thanks to being an otherwise unfaltering Nice Guy.
- In a similar vein to Ippo vs Kojima, Kamogawa vs Anderson is equal parts awesome and terrifying.
- Firstly, the Training from Hell Kamogawa puts himself through; He punches logs into a hill because his hatred for Anderson is what drives him to literally forge murder weapons out of his own fists. He breaks his own bones in order for them to heal and grow tougher as a result of this training. And by the day of the fight, Kamogawa had punched the log all the way through.
- The result of Kamogawa's log punching is that his fists leave visible imprints on what they hit. And not only that, Kamogawa's punches are so strong that Anderson felt it all the way to the bone marrow.
- However, this isn't helping Kamogawa throughout the fight; He's getting beaten down by Anderson quite brutally, and yet his will to keep fighting stays strong.
- Anderson throws one last powerful right cross in a bid to knock Kamogawa out. It wasn't enough to truly put him down. What happens next has to be the most brutal one-two in the entire series:
- After tanking the right, Kamogawa slams his left fist hard enough to tear through Anderson's abs, ripping through the muscles and digging deep enough to shatter the ribs. This breaks Kamogawa's left hand hard enough to start viscerally bleeding from it, to the point that the audience can clearly see it from their seats.
- This gets Anderson to double over, and as he panics, his second Miguel screams in fear for him to get his guard up, lest he eat Kamogawa's own right. This was a huge mistake. By opening up his body again, Kamogawa finds yet another opportunity to make a blunt-force, internal evisceration. And he takes that opportunity, by punching Anderson hard enough that he goes midair, horizontally while shattering his own right arm as well, practically destroying both of his own arms in an attempt to outright kill Anderson. And as for Anderson going midair, horizontally? You heard that right. Kamogawa, a bantamweight, managed to punch a guy seven weight classes higher than him, MIDAIR, HORIZONTALLY. To say that Anderson had been utterly destroyed in that match would be the understatement of the century.
- And the kicker? According to the commenter "@bloodyidit4506" (in this video
), it's possible:
@bloodyidit4506: "Hitting a guy so hard that he fucking goes midair horizontal is enough to break not just your hands, but could even cause tears in ligaments in your shoulder and back from the pure burst power. Considering Kamogawa's height and overall body structure he could realistically, MAYBE do this at absolute peak condition, not just in arms, but in his legs and back and stomach, the full body works and he'd have to be fucking high off his ass on his own adrenaline. Kamogawa's training couldn't be done in the time that was shown, in that amount of time, which is acceptable for plot reasons. But this? It's possible even factoring in his opponent's weight. And the blows that Kamogawa made to crush this guy would certainly break his hands at least. At peak adrenaline, you can't even feel the pain outside of a bare feeling something's off. But an entire hand getting broken? Not sure, and not going to test it, but I can see it. Just imagine, being such an asshole that a guy decides to train so hard to break you in half in two punches. And you pissed him off so much that he's willing to break HIMSELF just to utterly destroy you. This is why it's a good idea to be polite, folks."
- As much as he deserved every second of it, Sendo's epic beatdown on Shigeta can be, like Kamogawa's fight against Anderson, a mixture of incredible and disturbing.
- Similarly to the fight mentioned before, Sendo was being dominated in every second of the fight, being massacred by the plastic, fast and compact blows of Shigeta, who was also using a left-handed stance (even though he is right-handed). However, Shigeta made the serious mistake of underestimating Sendo's abilities, which turned on his fury button.
- But from nowhere, Sendo, overcome by hatred and anger, comes back stronger than before and gradually begins to destroy and nullify Shigeta's fighting style. Shigeta, feeling the pressure exerted by the champion, tries to counter with a right hook, but Sendo is quicker and traps the challenger in the ropes. From there, a real massacre begins.
- In a cheeky Shout-Out to Tomorrow's Joe, Sendo decides to throw a mighty Smash at Shigeta to lift him up and prop him up against the ropes to continue his beatdown. Now, where did a technique such as that come from? Kim Yongbi's Chom-Chom. The same technique that was used to keep opponents up and continue to savagely beat them until the referee realizes that he's witnessing attempted murder and tries to stop the fight. That's right, Sendo was fully intent on killing Shigeta right then and there. And had Sendo not been pulled away by the referee, he may have very well succeeded.
- A detail that may go unnoticed: The beating Shigeta receives is so severe that he has developed a syndrome called Punch Eye, which makes the victim absolutely terrified of hands approaching their face. Because of this, Shigeta had to give up his boxing career permanently. Something that might raise a good bit of melancholy.
- Alfredo Gonzalez's Metxli mode. It's a dual personality that Alfredo possesses, which activates whenever he's fighting. When it activates, Alfredo goes from a mild-mannered, calm man to a literal killing machine in the flesh, sadistic and insane, who will destroy everything in his path regardless of the consequences.
- This personality also drastically alters his fighting style and behavior. Alfredo is a hybrid and technical fighter, who usually finds his way to victory through technique, calm and rationality. But when Mextli steps into the ring, that's raised to over 8000. He becomes aggressive and extremely violent, advancing relentlessly against his opponents and hurting them in cruel ways with heavy, well-charged blows.
- Oh, and also: His quick snap-out during the fight against Sendo, when he was turning the fight against Alfredo into his normal mode? And that face doesn't help one bit. ◊
- Another forgotten detail that few remember: Randy Boy Junior's frightened expressions in his fight against Miyata.◊ He's not called "Asura" for nothing.
- Takamura's epic beating of Bryan Hawk. After Takamura begins to be dominated by Hawk and the American's superior technique becomes clear, the screen cuts to black and shows the flashbacks that took place before the fight. As soon as they end and hope seems to have died on Takamura's side, he emerges from the shadows, defends himself against Hawk's blow while shouting the sound and unleashes a violent sequence of punches against Hawk.
- And simply seeing Takamura, who is known for being a jerk with a heart of gold, turn into a complete monster, thirsty for blood and driven by hatred, is quite frightening to watch if you think about it for a moment. Takamura is the strongest character in the book, and as a result, he has been able to defeat all the greatest fighters that the anime and manga have ever had the opportunity to see fight, whether with difficulty or not. But in this one against Hawk, he showed why: destroying Hawk with violent blows, using dodges, inflicting cruel damage on the American while roaring like an animal.
