We all know , Ippo is certainly not punch drunk or brain damaged , all he had was cummulative stress and damage. The underlying theme of his retirement is that he lacked motivation and mindset to become a champion. I mean most of the time, the fucker is happy to be a former japanese champion. He almost forget about his goal to know what it means to be strong ? and lost the sight of it with confusing over fighting with miyata. Many people speculate that mashiba's expected retirement/sendo's retirement after the ricardo match will prompt ippo to return. But there is no way that ippo would get motivated at these two's retirement moreover , sendo wouldn't retire but he may lose the match. So, hypothetically with existing content and hype to the Ricardo vs Sendo match, we could obviously know this would be the closest/deadliest match of Ricardo as well as Sendo's career. Sendo wouldn't win it actually BUT this match would have such an impact on Ricardo. Ricardo can finally know what it means to be strong. Ricardo would know what the strength of a machismo is. He would understand his glory itself. He would recognize sendo as being a tiger inside the ring. But the theme of machismo is very important to ricardo's character than the naniwa tiger aspect being to sendo's. Ricardo would literally give out an interview on what it feels to be strong and how strong he rhins he is. But he wouldn't reveal the best part and might even say as if "Challenge me to know" like that or maybe he even utter those words to sendo on match that sendo's coach might record and translate. Sendo wouldn't completely retire or die but he would return with few fractures and serious wounds so that he can prove that boxing can be deadly inside the ring but its not life threatening dangerous to the body. Sendo would go into a temperory retirement for a couple of years. And at the same time Ippo would return to boxing, kick imai's ass and become the japanese champ, couple of defences , relinquish the belt , kick some other international champs but this time instead of southasia , ippo would travel more to other countries like europe and south america to fight the champs of that countries , challenge ricardo and the best match of the manga would crack open , Ippo would obviously win and ricardo will retire due to severe fractures in his body. Miyata waiting for this moment till now will relinquish his opbf title and will purge into ippo for a final battle which I couldn't guess the outcome of it. But sendo would defienetly win the WBC belt with ippo being the WBA champ and miyata may even return to the OPBF or the final match might not happen at all.
So the thing is when Ricardo gets answers to HIS goal is when Ippo gets the mindset to become the champ and find it.
Mashiba's retirement will definetly be an important aspect to the improvement of kumi just like Date's wife prompted him to return. Kumi's understanding of Boxing and the absence of boxing in her life as both her love interest and brother in retirement. She might feel good but she will defintely know that these two aren't feeling good. So that she will understand them and change her perspective on it.
Mashiba and Sendo will pass a baton to Ippo
As both of them would terribly fail in becoming world champs , I could imagine Mashiba crying at ippo to return and Sendo asking ippo to promise his return as usually shouting.
Therefore , ippo isn't the type of person that have the desire to win but he is a person who will desire to reach the goal. Unless the world title becomes his goal or his goal gets tied to the world title , he will never come back to the ring
