I kind of think Kazuki was the tougher opponent. Ippo didn't exactly get lucky, he earned that win with a dempsy roll feint into a rib breaker. The thing is, at no point until that KO pattern did Ippo have a snowballs chance in hell of winning. It was nearly Martinez vs Date or Miyata vs Arnie, with everything coming down to a do or die final effort with no hope of a comeback if it fails.
I'm not sure Sendou has that in him, with his wild swings and overreliance on power over precision..
To date, Ippo is the only opponent Sendo has ever officially lost to and there's a good reason for that. Kazuki might dominate the early rounds, but Sendo's wild instincts and the smash are eventually going to give him the victory. Sendo will foolhardly tank Kazuki's precision punches and lay out Kazuki flat on his ass with a smash imo.
Originally posted by cdtmNah, I think Ippo's benefit is that he's tough enough to tank Sendo's punches and that he applied a bit of strategy at the end there when he anticipated Sendo countering the dempsey as well as his followup smash. Tbh, if not for plot armor, Sendo probably wouldn't be as ranked as high as he is at the moment (#4 featherweight in the world). He's one dimensional and with zero plot armor, people like Miyata (and even Kazuki now that I seriously think about) would probably wreck him no problem. He literally won his latest fight in the manga as a result of yamato damashi alone. 😂
Let me guess, something about Ippo messes up his instincts.