is a Japanese boxing-themed manga series written and illustrated by George Morikawa. It has been serialized by Kodansha in the shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine since October 1989 and collected into 136 tankōbon volumes as of November 2022. It follows the story of high school student Makunouchi Ippo, as he begins his career in boxing and over time obtains many titles and defeats various opponents. A 76-episode anime adaptation produced by Madhouse aired on Nippon TV from October 2000 to March 2002. A television film and an original video animation (OVA) were released in 2003. A second series titled : New Challenger aired from January to June 2009. A third series : Rising aired from October 2013 to March 2014. In North America, the first series, including the television film, was licensed by Geneon in 2003, which released it under the name Fighting Spirit. It was re-licensed by Discotek Media in 2020, including the television film and the OVA. As of December 2021, the manga had over 100 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series. In 1991, won the 15th Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category. Plot Ippo Makunouchi is an extremely shy high school student, unable to make friends due to always being busy helping his mother run their family fishing charter business. Because he kept to himself, a group of bullies led by Umezawa got into the habit of picking on him. One day, when these bullies gave him a rather serious beating, a middleweight professional boxer who was passing by stopped them and took the injured Ippo to the , owned by retired boxer Genji Kamogawa, to treat his wounds. After Ippo awoke to the sounds of boxers training, the boxer who saved him, Mamoru Takamura, tried to cheer Ippo up by letting him vent his frustrations on a sandbag. It was then that they had their first glimpse into Ippo's talent for boxing. After that incident, Ippo gave the situation a lot of thought and decided that he would like to begin a career as a professional boxer. When he conveys this message to Mamoru Takamura, he gets verbally reprimanded: Takamura thought Ippo was taking professional boxing too lightly. However, Takamura felt that he couldn't outright refuse Ippo, especially since his feat of punching the sandbag much harder than anybody else in the gym (except for Takamura). Therefore, he