GtFS: Ichiro Miyata
“Strength isn’t everything in a fight. It’s all about being able to meticulously and effectively target an opponent’s weak point.” Hello everyone and today we will be looking at Ippo’s first opponent and main rival, Ichiro Miyata.
Ichiro is a handsome young man with a dead series disposition and is the current champion of the Orintal Pacific Boxing Federation. He is also noteworthy as Ippo’s first opponent, having sparred with him twice before the two entered the world of professional boxing. Miyata is the son of a Japanese Boxer who was famous for compensating for his lack of strength with counterpunching, a type of punch that is thrown during an attack in order to take advantage of a person’s forward motion during their attack. Miyata believed wholeheartedly in his father’s methods and was shocked when his father was handed a defeat and forced to retire. Miyata would then take up boxing himself with the intention of proving to the world that his father’s method of fighting was not wrong.
And for the most part, Miyata has proven such as even before receiving a pro license, he was regarded as a boxing prodigy by the local community. Like his father, Miyata is primarily an Out-Boxer whose main weapons are counter punches. To complement this, Miyata has developed his speed to such a high degree that it’s almost impossible for other fighters to get a beat on him. Miyata is also somewhat of a bullfighter. One of his most commonly used tactics is to move at a speed that his opponents can keep up with in order to lull them into a sense of safety and goat them into attacking him. He would then speed up and deliver a devastating counterpunch. However, while these methods do work most of the time, Miyata also has some pretty big weaknesses. For starters, while he is very fast, he lacks any real strength or durability. In just about every one of his fights, Miyata was put in a bad spot upon taking a single hit. His lack of strength and stubborn nature has also led to a reliance and fixation on counter punches, meaning that if he fights someone who specializes in dealing with counter punches like a swarmer or switch-hitter, he is basically helpless. Even against fighters who claim to be weak against counter-punches, there are workarounds that an experienced fighter can exploit. For example, Sendo, who openly admits to struggling against counterpunchers, was able to fight Miyata to a draw when he realized Miyata was always aiming for the head.
Regardless of his weaknesses, Miyata trained hard to become a profighter at the Kamogawa Boxing Gym. It was there he meant Ippo for the first time. Miyata acted as Ippo’s sparring partner in order to prove that he had a chance of being a boxer and though Ippo put up a good fight, even forcing Miyata to use a counter punch, he still defeated Ippo pretty easily. However, when the two sparred again months later, Ippo managed to defeat Miyata. Humiliated, Miyata left the KBG and challenged Ippo to meet him again at the finals of the Rookie King Tournament. Sadly, this was not meant to be as Miyata had the misfortune of facing Mashiba beforehand, whom he was unable to defeat. Once again humiliated, Miyata spent some time fighting in Thailand in order to improve his skills before returning to Japan to claim the OPBF Title. This had made him the enemy of Mr. Sakagouchi, whose boxer Miyata defeated for the title. Sakagouchi would then send several boxers to fight Miyata in hopes of bringing him down a peg. This included Randy Boy Jr. the son of the man who defeated Miyata’s father who had inherited his Switch-Hitter Style. Wanting to succeed where his father had failed, Miyata called off a match he had planned with Ippo in order to take him on and defeat him.
Since then, Miyata has continued to defend the OPBF title though doing so is starting to take its toll on his body. Unlike Ippo who’s natural body type is FeatherWeight, Miyata’s body has developed and is now more fit for junior lightweight. However, Miyata refuses to move up a weight class in the hopes that he will one day fight Ippo again, even after he retires from boxing. As a result, Miyata is forced to endure a similar starvation diet to Takamura’s in addition to fighting a match once every month. How much longer he can keep this up is anyone’s guess but we will just have to wait and see.
Some more loose facts about Miyata:
Given his fixation on boxing, Miyata is one of the few characters in the series to persure a romantic relationship. This is in spite of the fact that he has a rather large group of female fans.
Despite this fact however, a recurring joke in the series is that Ippo is gay for Miyata considering how closely he follows his boxing career. A fact that Miyata is super uncomfortable with.
Miyata’s fighting style is based on Sugar Ray Lenard, who also happens to be Miyata’s favorite boxer.
And that pretty much does it for Miyata. Hope you enjoyed this little history lesson and that you will join me next week for another.
His downfall needs to be studied.🥲
