Chapter 465

Cheese Champion
Chapter Info
Next	Chapter 466
Chapter	465
Previous	Chapter 464
Volume	52
Japanese Title	チーズチャンピオン
Romanized Title	Chīzu Chanpion
Pages	20
Arc	Dragon Slayer Arc
Episode	Round 7 (Season 3) (p.1-8, 10-17)
Issue	Weekly Shōnen Magazine #4-5, 2000 (cover date): January 10-15, 2000
Release (JP)	December 22, 1999

Cheese Champion is Round 465 of Jōji Morikawa's Hajime no Ippo manga series.

Details

• Locations Introduced: Nagoya Oniyaritome Boxing Gym
• Title Page Character(s): Mamoru Takamura, Ippo Makunouchi, Larry Bernard

Summary

Takamura continues to dodge Bernard's attacks. As Bernard throws a left straight, Takamura counters it with his own left straight, which knocks Bernard down before he was able to land a follow up left hook. The referee stops the match and declares Takamura the winner. Outside of Takamura's changing room, Takamura yells at Aoki and started blaming him for embarrassing him. After Team Aoki ran away, Kamogawa begins to yell at Takamura,, but Takamura tells him to lay off since he won. As he was leaving before Kamogawa continued to lecture him, he yells to Kamogawa to get ready to take over another weight class since he was not going to fight at another weight class. Ippo thinks if Takamura fought normally, it would have been possible that he might not have been hit at all. Itagaki believes Takamura should have stay as junior middleweight in order to make more money, since he didn't need to rush things. Kimura didn't think Takamura was in it for the money, since he left his belt behind. The next day, Kamogawa calls Ippo into his office with Yagi. He asks Ippo how many times he defended the title. Ippo answers four defences. Kamogawa believes four defences was the mark of a great champion, and to think about moving to the next left. However, he wants to know why Ippo had four challenges. He tells Ippo that he was a "cheese champion", which is a champion with as many holes as swiss cheese. He explains to Ippo this is proof that he was being underestimated after his match with Shimabukuro, and he can only go forward after he cleared those hurdles. He asks Ippo to pick his next opponent, and they prepared videos for all of them. Ippo picked Sawamura's challenge from Oniyaritome gym in Nagoya. Kamogawa thought Ippo picked an interesting choice, but Yagi wants Ippo to watch his videos before rushing into it. Ippo tells them about his meeting with Sawamura. Yagi believes Sawamura was confident if he thought the Dempsey Roll was clumsy. Kamogawa compliments Ippo on his bravery since comment that Sawamura thought Ippo was a cheese champion more than anyone else. Yagi is shocked by it, and mentions that Sawamura was the worst kind of opponent for the Dempsey Roll. Ippo remarks about them noticing it too, and wants to fight Sawamura. Later Yagi and Kamogawa were talking about it. Kamogawa believes Ippo's face shown he wasn't pushed by pride, but his will was clear. Ippo might be young, but he is a man who can act on his will. He wants to bet everything on Ippo's will. He believes that even if Ippo lost, he feels that Ippo could recover by using that as a cushion. Yagi is surprised that Kamogawa thought Ippo could lose, and realised how tough the opponent will be. Ippo is at home watching videos of Sawamura's matches. He is shocked that Shimabukuro's one loss in the West Japan Rookie King Tournament was against Sawamura. Sawamura manages to beat Shimabukuro with so much stamina in a four round fight. He sees Sawamura's counter was nothing like Miyata's.

Trivia

• Takamura was mistaken as a sumo wrestler by the driver in his cab ride home, since Ryōgoku Kokugikan is used for sumo wrestling.
• In Round 419, Kamogawa mentioned Shimabukuro lost a match in the second round of the West Japan Rookie Kings. He couldn't get a video of the match, but told Ippo that the opponent avoided Shimabukuro for four rounds.