It's fun seeing Mashiba begrudgingly be more heroic during these situations.
Also, on your comment about enjoying Woli:
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A thought: you said that a Volg fight would be a good place to end Season 6, right? Well, that would make Volg Bookend Season 6 in the same way that Mashiba Book-Ended our idea for Season 4. Season 4 would start with Itagaki sparring against Mashiba and would end with a Mashiba fight, and Season 6 would start with Wally sparring against Volg (which also re-introduces him into the story) and end with a Volg fight.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 15th 2020 at 6:01:59 AM
I had actually completely forgotten that Volg spars with Woli. Good catch. You're right, that would make season 6 perfectly book-ended by Volg, almost like it's his A Day in the Limelight season.
Edited by Gaon on May 15th 2020 at 6:32:43 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I enjoyed the Wally fight. I know, blasphemous, but the kid is fun and his fighting style is a blast to watch. From the start of the fight, it was clear that Wally was seriously lacking in both strength and defense compared to Ippo, and Ippo's punches have a way of destroying anything they touch, even his weaker punches. It makes sense that 12 super-precise body blows in the exact same place would have an effect, and since body blows do damage to both a fighter's stamina and legs, once those body blows took effect, Wally was pretty much dead in the water.
Also, the fight wasn't 30 chapters long, don't exaggerate. It was only 29. I will say that it didn't really feel that long, it went by pretty quick.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 16th 2020 at 2:23:05 AM
We did it boys.
We found someone who enjoyed Woli.
Run for your lives.
PS: It's technically Wally, I think, but due the aforementioned translation wars there was a flip flop between Woli and Wally for a while. In my case I ended up sticking with Woli.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."You know, I'd like to see Wally return someday, he was a good kid. Gaon, in your earlier idea of having Ricardo Martinez retiring, and Ippo takes the WBA championship belt and has to fight Itagaki, Miyata, and Sendo in a tournament to unify all the belts and then fight Ricardo, did you have an idea for what Wally could do with that whole end-game thing? I think it would be cool if the opponent Ippo has to fight for the title after Ricardo steps down is Wally, give them a proper rematch on the world level with both of them trained up to their true potential, and Ippo getting a decisive victory for the belt.
There’s a lot to be said about the current direction, but you need to get caught up before that can be dissected.
All that being said, having Ricardo just retire and not get beaten would sort of run into the Yujiro Hanma paradox, an antagonist (later writing doesn’t let me use the word villain outright) who the entire narrative is focused on beating, yet no one does.
Edited by Beatman1 on May 16th 2020 at 9:53:00 AM
Alright, I'll hold off on theorizing until I catch up. For all I know, Wally does make a reappearance where he loses to hype up another guy...
In other news, Kimura has been Mistaken for Pedophile and Iimura actually is one! I mean, Itagaki called her for the date, but she's like 25, and Itagaki is barely 18. I guess it's technically legal, but I was squicked out when she just hinted at a crush on Ippo, and Itagaki is significantly younger than Ippo.
EDIT: Oh no, Kimura's Mistaken for Pedophile got SO MUCH WORSE.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 16th 2020 at 7:24:58 AM
I'm at the Kojima fight build-up. Looks like Ippo fell for the same writing trick I did and thought Kojima was a good guy (he actually seems to be supportive and kind to his juniors, he's just got a HUGE superiority complex when it comes to the strength of his punches). I liked that when he started shit-talking Sendo, Shimabukuro, and Sawamura (on that note, why were they mentioning Sawamura, and not Jimmy Sisfar? The whole thing seemed to be about hard punchers, and Jimmy had some of the strongest punches Ippo ever had to contend with) Ippo didn't get visibly all that mad, he just looked disappointed because he wanted to have a fun fight with another good guy after Wally, not have to deal with another jerk-ass.
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To clarify, my idea was that Martinez would retire to make way for Miyata vs Ippo (eventually) to unify the belts and then Martinez comes out of retirement to fight the (presumably undisputed) Ippo. This would allow Ippo vs Miyata to have the weight to crown "Martinez's sucessor" and would also be for all the belts. After Ippo (one presumes) is crowned champ, Martinez can come back of retirement to match him and we'd have the idea that in the inevitable Martinez vs Ippo match Ippo would only win because Martinez was past his prime and the question of how Ippo would have done against Martinez "in his prime" will be a question for the ages.
This idea was also so Ippo could have sparrings and trainings with everyone else he faced (like Sendo, Miyata, Volg, Mashiba, Date e.t.c) before facing Martinez to give it a sort of All Your Powers Combined feel as everybody comes together to help Ippo face Martinez.
It's also just very much like modern boxing for a "dream fight" that happens when one of the parties is considered to be "past his prime". Most recently Canelo Alvarez vs Gennady Golovkin I and II, dream fights between two of the sports best, ended up only occurring when Golovkin was 35/36 years old, considered by some as just past his prime and it's a question for philosophers how well Canelo would match up with Golovkin "prime for prime" (and in fact, some consider Canelo Alvarez to have yet not reached his prime, making the discussion even foggier). It'd fit with Martinez's legendary reputation to give Ippo absolute Hell even past his prime.
Martinez is also somewhere along 33/34 currently, so about the average age in boxing where a boxer starts to age out of his prime.
On the topic of Woli: I never want to see him again, but what I can say would be interesting would be to see Woli losing his freakshow athletics to age or damage and having to fight in that hypothetical set-up while his body starts to betray him in a race against time. Would give him more nuance and a interesting arc beyond "this is an moderately racist caricature of a Indonesian ape-man who's just absurdly powerful".
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Well, Wally's motivation is that he loves boxing and wants to protect the environment, that's something I can get behind. Besides, they kind of did set up for Wally to return at some point, talking about how he's still only starting, he has a ton of untapped potential, he could go to the world level once he's trained hard enough, and most of all, that Ippo barely won by the skin of his teeth, with Kamogawa outright admitting that if they had a rematch, Wally would win, hands-down.
I just don't see a situation where Wally doesn't come back into the story at some point, and his fight with Ippo felt sort of like Ippo's first fight with Sendo, where Ippo won but the fight didn't resolve in his mind properly. It would make sense to pay that off in the same way as with Sendo, with Ippo beating Wally in a match for the World Championship.
Anyways, neat to see Oda Yusuke again, and now that I know the context behind those stitches on Kojima's hand, I wonder if Kojima will look like Papaya did in his rematch with Aoki, with just one massively buff arm and a much skinnier other arm.
Yeah, now I'm at the fight, and I'm really enjoying this build-up. The Kojima fight feels like it's a mirror to the Nao fight, and while it's similar, it is approaching the drama from a slightly different angle. Also, Itagaki was reminded of one other time that Ippo went into a fight in a different frame of mind, and I'm almost positive he was remembering the Nao fight, so I'm guessing it'll be a literal call-back.
I can't help it, I'm a sucker for "I'm coming for your head, you loser prick (actually I'm a huge fan, I just want you to take me seriously)" type dynamic, even if this fight doesn't have the long set-up Nao had, I'm still really invested, even to the point of going "awww" when Kojima was internally fanboying in the locker room and reading his wife's letter about their upcoming child (which is just the most adorable thing).
Awesome OHKO. I hope that's not the last we see of Kojima, I was kind of hoping for him to come clean afterwards.
And now, the true ultimate battle: Takamura vs Date, Sendo, Mashiba, Saeki, and Okita.
Aww, Kojima got his Ippo autograph, aww. I hope we see him and his newborn baby again sometime in the future.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 16th 2020 at 10:31:12 AM
Itagaki vs Saeki was awesome, cool to see that Saeki lives inside the same hyper-speed world Itagaki does. Iga seems interesting, I wonder how that'll be resolved. Read those bits last night, now I'm starting the Volg title fight.
Man, Sendo really does not want to admit that he and Ippo are totally best friends.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 17th 2020 at 3:55:54 AM
Saeki vs Itagaki is one of the most awesomely ridiculous fights of the series. People operating in fucking bullet time while they box and running marathons after the ring once every few seconds.
Be sure to give your thoughts on Volg's fight. It's a fight that really tugged my heartstrings.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Volg uses the Hien and Mike looks at Volg's feet to determine when he's going to throw it. Mike thinks about how his favorite type of fights are the ones that feel like a chess game of wits and strategy, and that's awesome. I love that, that's all the characterization I needed from Mike. And David Eagle's his old buddy who holds his skill in high regard? Oh, that's cool.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on May 17th 2020 at 5:19:14 AM
David Eagle has a surprising lot of things to do ringside in this fight.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."

A part of me really wishes Randy Boy Jr was Miyata's recurring rival. They had an interesting thing going between them. It's definitely my favorite fight of Miyata's part even if I was rooting for Randy Boy Jr full-on
Edited by Gaon on May 15th 2020 at 2:41:13 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."