Hajime no Ippo: Champion Road (はじめの一歩 Champion Road) was a TV Special for the Hajime no Ippo anime, first aired April 18, 2003 as part of NTV's Friday Road Show. It covered Ippo's first title defence match as the Japanese Featherweight Champion.
It was followed by the OVA Extra Round: Kimura vs. Mashiba, although in the manga story the events in the OVA take place first.
Summary
Makunouchi Ippo's first fight to defend the Feather-Weight belt was soon coming.Doing that Ippo and Coach Kamogawa had trained and trained until the day they were going to fight.On the day everyone had came, but that didn't do anything to Ippo besides make him feel under pressure. While he was under pressure Sanada(Former Champion)and (Doctor) had already felt Ippo's pressure, doing so Ippo was caught off guard and Sanada had used the heirn. But at the end Hamda Dankichi had told Sanada a deadly technique. Sanda stood back up and dodged all Ippo's attacks doing that Sanada had been punching Ippo's Stomach. Until Coach Kamogawa had seen what he did, and explained to Ippo what it does, and what it does is it weakens the legs a lot. But then Ippo couldn't stand up until he told Coach Kamogawa to slap him on the back to wake his legs up. And when Kamogawa had slapped him on the back Ippo immediately stood up and when to Sanada and did the Gazelle Punch for a finish and then did the Dempsey roll. Doing the Dempsey roll he had punched him a lot but he was still up. And just about when Sanada was about to K.O Ippo he had frozen up and just fell to the ground. When he had fell to the Ground the referee stopped the count, and Ippo successfully defended his belt.
Staff
Cast
- Makunouchi Ippo - Kiyasu Kouhei
- Coach Kamogawa - Utsumi Kenji
- Nekota Ginpachi - Nagai Ichirou
- Takamura Mamoru - Koyama Rikiya
- Aoki Masaru - Takagi Wataru
- Kimura Tatsuya - Fujiwara Keiji
- Mashiba Kumi - Kobayashi Sanae
- Manager Yagi - Nakajima Toshihiko
- Sendou Takeshi - Onosaka Masaya
- Miyata Ichirou - Seki Tomokazu
- Mashiba Ryou - Tanaka Masahiko
- Ippo's Mother - Terauchi Yorie
- Umezawa Masahiko - Madono Mitsuaki
- Tomiko - Tsuda Shouko
- Kinoshita Coach* - Totani Kouji
- Fujii Minoru - Ono Kenichi
- Iimura Mari - Shinohara Emi
- Ringside Announcer - Horikawa Jin
- Referee - Izumi Hisashi
- Ring Announcer - Konishi Katsuyuki
- Tsugumi - Momomori Sumomo
- Hama Dankichi - Katou Seizou
- Sanada Kazuki - Yamadera Kouichi
*The Kinoshita Gym Coach was mistakenley listed as the Kimura Gym Coach in the credits.