New Challenger Saga

The New Challenger Saga is the fourth story saga, and the last in the first part of the series.

With Ippo Makunouchi's victory over the JBC featherweight title, Tatsuya Kimura also has a JBC junior lightweight title match coming up against Ryō Mashiba. In the process, Kimura searches for a Sunday punch, a secret weapon to counter Mashiba's dangerous Flicker Jabs.

Ippo begins his role of defending his title, with his first title defence match being against former junior featherweight champion Kazuki Sanada who just moved up a weight class. Due to his profession as a doctor, he can target vital inner parts of the body, and has two unique techniques with the names of Tsubame Gaeshi and Hien that he learned from his coach Dankichi Hama, an old rival of Ippo's coach Genji Kamogawa.

Ichirō Miyata then challenges the OPBF featherweight champion Arnie Gregory, managed by Mr. Sakaguchi. Shortly after, Eiji Date, after defeating the second ranker in the WBA, gets to finally have a rematch against the undefeated WBA world champion and hero of Mexico, Ricardo Martínez.

Ippo for his second JBC featherweight title defence match is challenged by a familiar boxer with the ring name Hammer Nao who just dropped down to the featherweights just to face him. Hammer Nao leaves his opponents severely stunned with his technique the Solar Plexus Blow.

Mamoru Takamura's world title match has been settled once he wins his preliminary match against Morris West. The WBC junior middleweight world champion, Bryan Hawk watched, and saw Takamura fight in poor condition due to his weight control struggle. Hawk turns out to be a big trash talker, and in the ring a ruthless unorthodox fighter who relies on pure violence. Takamura shows great struggle with his weight control in this weight class, and due to the match being set by the world champion in two months after his previous match, it does not give much time for Takamura to recover. As the semi-final, Ippo defends his JBC featherweight title for the third time against Yi Yon Su.

Afterwards, Kamogawa and Ginpachi Nekota share their story after World War II to Ippo and Masaru Aoki, as they remember the promise they made to a girl from Hiroshima named Yuki when they were still active prize fighters, and the American welterweight boxer who they were trying to defeat, Ralph Anderson.

Story Arcs[]

Trivia[]

In the French manga licensed version, the publishers named this Saga as (Saison 2 - "Destins de boxeurs"), translated to Season 2 - "Fate of Boxers" or "Boxers Destiny". Spanning from Round 269 to Round 415.
All arcs except the last arc, which was adapted in the third anime season, "Rising" was adapted into the second anime season "New Challenger".