MiyaIppo

MiyaIppo is the slash ship between Ichirou Miyata and Ippo Makunouchi from the Hajime no Ippo fandom.

Canon
Makunouchi first met Miyata at Kamogawa boxing gym, where they sparred to evaluate the former's ability. The match ended with Miyata being the victor, who deemed boxing just become more interesting because of this newcomer. They had a second rematch spar, where Ippo demonstrated his incredible growth with enhanced techniques, and a strategy to neutralize Ichirou's signature counter on top of that. Motivated to face Ippo in a professional ring, Ichirou left Kamogawa gym since boxers of the same gyms cannot fight each other professionally, and made a promise to face off in the East Japan Rookie King Tournament with his new rival.

Both boxers did their best at the East Japan Rookie King Tournament, until Miyata's semi-final fight with Ryou Mashiba, who cheated by stepping on his foot, preventing the former from throwing counters. Mashiba then knocked Miyata down, disqualifying him from the tournament. When Ippo visited Ichirou after the match, he was greeted by the scene of the unconscious fighter, with an apology passed on to Ippo by the defeated's father. Ippo was devastated by not having been able to fight Miyata, in the Kamogawa gym he remains absorbed in helplessness, hitting his bags, hurting his knuckles, having to be stopped by Takamura.

After their high school graduation, Miyata visited Makunouchi and told him that he would travel overseas to Thailand and Korea to fight strong boxers there, as he wanted to fill up the gap between him and the East Japan Rookie King Tournament's Champion.

Moments

 * Being super anxious about his rematch spar with Ichirou, Ippo tried to follow his mom's advice of imagining his opponent as a fish as his dad used to do this back in the days, and failed miserably since "there's no fish as handsome as that". (Manga vol. 2 Chapter 9)
 * Ippo is excited to see Miyata at the Kamogawa gym, Takamura is talking about how all the women left the show when Aoki's fight started and then talks about Hayami's popularity with the women. Ippo gets into the conversation saying that women should improve their tastes because if he were a girl he would choose Miyata. (Round 55)
 * When asked about Miyata by his junior Itagaki, Makunouchi then rambled on about Miyata's charms, how "this and that happened", then blushed when he realized he spoke too much. Itagaki thought how it's like hearing "a story about his lover", and other women who are interested in Makunouchi would have to wait a little longer in his opinion.

Fanon
It is hard to evaluate the fandom's opinion on MiyaIppo since there's not a big and active fandom for the series. However, from what have been observed from the little fancontent available on various social media, people ship this pair because of both characters' passion to fight each other. Their rivalry mirrors some other shonen manga lead pair with the ying and yang dynamic. MiyaIppo is the most popular ship in Hajime no Ippo, as it is the most written ship on AO3 for both characters. There are currently 17 works on AO3.

Fandom

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