Iga vs. Oushima is Round 1140 of Jōji Morikawa's Hajime no Ippo manga series.
Details[]
- Characters Introduced: Sōshi Ōshima
- Title Page Character(s): Masaru Aoki, Tatsuya Kimura
Summary[]
Aoki and Kimura run to the audience area to watch Iga's JBC lightweight title match with Ippo, Takamura, and Itagaki. As Iga walks to the ring, Ippo notices that Iga seems calm for his first title defence. Takamura thinks that he is only calm because he has Baron with him, as Baron is probably working a mind control angle on him since he has a way with words. Takamura adds that it is like some kind of symbolic relationship that brings out Iga's inner strength. While Itagaki thinks it is like a strong bond between a trainer and his fighter, Takamura deems Iga is more like a dog. When the popular JBC lightweight champion, Sōshi Ōshima, gets to the ring, Itagaki and Takamura get irritated by how long Ōshima's flower bouquet line is taking. In the ring, Baron expresses his disgust to Iga about the champion. Baron tells him, while grabbing him by his hair, to not mess it up and make him look bad, since he begged businesses to get him his quality boxing trunks as he promised the businesses that they would be sponsoring the future world champion. As Iga gets ready to leave the corner, Baron tells him to do what he taught him, to put all his faith in him and believe in him. The gong sounds for the start of the match.