Makunouchi Ippo/Boxing Abilities

Ippo is an in-fighter who boasts one of the best punching power in Japan. His punching power caused him to become the All-Japan Rookie King, successful in the A Class Boxer Tournament. In one go, he rose in the rankings and had a chance for the Japan's throne, the JBC featherweight belt. Though, he lost to champion Date Eiji, he won against champion Sendō Takeshi, taking the belt and defending it a total of eight times.

Physical Strength
Even before joining the Kamogawa Boxing Gym, Ippo showed extraordinary muscular strength and punching power when he punched the sandbag for the first time, surprising everyone at the gym.

Training
One of the main reasons for Ippo's success as a boxer is his willingness to train. Even before he started boxing, he had a good muscle build. Years of helping his mother carrying the fishing coolers to and from the boat helped develop his muscles and also constantly moving around on the fishing boat helped him develop a good lower body as well as good balance. To train for his fight with Ozuma, he ran full speed at bars at the park in order to speed up his ducking so as to avoid Ozuma's powerful hooks. Before the rest of the Rookie King Tournament, he embarks on his first training camp with the Kamogawa gym, the camp was held at the beach and it improved Ippo's lower body strength and endurance due to all the running on the sand. To prepare for the Volg fight, Kamogawa had Ippo build up his lower body with many hill runs and squats in order to build the strength needed to throw the Gazelle Punch. In Ippo's return fight after the loss to Date, he trained his lower body even more with harsh sprints, he also decided to improve his bobbing and weaving and unknowingly used a not so polished version of the Dempsey roll. To prepare for his second fight with Sendou, he had a training camp in the mountains. There, Nekota introduced Ippo to the method of chopping wood to help back strength, and further utilised running in the mountains to add more leg strength. Ippo's sheer physicality coupled with his indomitable fighting spirit, enables him to endure tremendous physical damage and continue fighting.

Ultimately, even though Ippo doesn't have the natural instincts of boxers like Sendou and Takamura, he has, as Kamogawa puts it, "developed something just as good: experience".

Technique
Over the course of his boxing career, Ippo has learned many boxing techniques, even learning techniques during a match, such as the Tornado Jolt and the Southpaw stance. He picked up Kamogawa's technique, the Tekken by digging logs into the ground using a hammer and also picked up the Heart Break Shot from Date. He even came up with one of his own, the Dempsey Roll, later on improving it to the New Dempsey Roll, and even more, the Diagonal Dempsey Roll.

Weaknesses
Ippo is notoriously simple-minded. In nearly all of his matches, difficulties arose when his opponent did something he had not prepared for, such as Malcolm Gedo's Magic Punch and Woli's Corner Work. In fact, he lost the championship match with Date Eiji entirely because he failed to grasp how the champ was negating the power behind his punches. Interestingly, the few times Ippo did something his opponents didn't expect, he won the match (such as his southpaw stance in his first fight, or his brawling stance in his match with Kojima). Another weakness of Ippo's is the fact that he is mildly predictable. As explained by OPBF champion Miyata, Ippo always steps forward and attacks head on, a trait that a cautious boxer could easily take advantage of.

Because of his height, Ippo is at a perpetual disadvantage outside of close-range. He has no options but to move forward in every one of his fights. His short reach is arguably the main reason he lost to Alfredo Gonzales.

It is stated by Kamogawa that his signature move Dempsey Roll was not only a strength, but also a weakness. The Dempsey Roll is weak against counters.

It should be noted since his defeat against Gonzales, Ippo has begun to show symptoms attributed towards Punch-Drunk syndrome, as presented after his fight where he was unable to draw in a straight line, with his hands shaking uncontrollably. However, after he was forced to take a month off from the gym he later returned without any symptoms. Kamogawa and his gymmates still caution that his fighting style involves taking too many hits; to deal with this, he has developed a more evasive version of the Dempsey Roll.

Another weakness is his inexperience with southpaws, as seen when he fought Antonio. As the southpaws leg and hand are in reverse, Ippo had trouble seeing how far away Antonio was and kept tripping over his leg.