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History
of Kickboxing
The true roots of Kickboxing can be found to date back
2000 years ago in Far East Asia, where Muay Thai Kickboxing
was commonly practiced as a self-defense discipline. However
it gradually became more of a sport over the years. Thai
boxing soon became the most common and popular fighting
sport in Asia. MuayThai - Kickboxing was controlled by
the Thailand government, under the name of WMTC (World
MuayThai Council). The main proponent that gave way to
the rise of Kickboxing was Bruce Lee, making the link
with the United States, making way for the future of International
Kickboxing. By the late Twentieth century the sport Kickboxing
was starting to take its own original form. The strong
urge for a Full contact sport, overtaking the rigid rules
and boundaries of Karate, led to an all- new evolved version
of Full contact Kickboxing.
Joe Lewis, the first Professional Karate Association PKA
World Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion, was a pioneer of
full contact karate and fought in the prototype full contact
bout in Long Beach, CA in Jan 1970. It was Lewis who contacted
karate innovator Mike Anderson with a view to organizing
and promoting the new sport of full contact karate, as
it was called in those days. Full contact karate, now
called kickboxing, was officially born in Los Angeles
in September 1974 when Anderson, together with Don and
Judy Quine, formed the first world sanctioning body for
the new sport and named it the PKA. They promoted the
first full contact World Professional Karate Championships.
This was the beginning of modern kickboxing.
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George
Bruckner from Germany, who was a close friend of Mike
Anderson, pioneered full contact karate in Europe. In
1975 Bruckner together with other European martial artists
formed the World All Style Karate Organization WAKO. First
European Kickboxing Championships were promoted by Bruckner
in 1976 in Germany. Full contact karate, or kickboxing,
was by this time spreading globally and had become an
international sport.
In USA a number of other kickboxing sanctioning bodies
came into being, namely WKA (World Karate Association)
, ISKA (International Sport Karate Association), KICK
(Karate International Council of Kickboxing), PKC (Professional
Karate Commission) and WAKO-Pro (World Association of
Kickboxing Organizations - Professional).The WKF (World
Kickboxing Federation) was established in London in 1987.
With the formation of these sanctioning bodies, promoters
in the USA and elsewhere began to promote world title
fights as well as international kickboxing bouts. Kickboxing
had started to gain in popularity all over the world,
to the point where it had become both an internationally
recognized sport and martial arts discipline.
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Development
of Kickboxing
When full contact karate (now kickboxing) first began
as a sport in the US in the early seventies, the fighters
of that time had to learn through a process of trial and
error. The fighters all came from ranks of traditional
karate or other traditional martial arts, and when they
fought in professional full contact bouts certain shortcomings
and defects became apparent. They discovered that they
were not as fit or conditioned as they had thought and
they struggled to fight 10 rounds in the professional
ring. The full contact fighters also discovered to their
dismay that their punches were not as effective in the
ring as they had expected. This was partially due to the
fact that in many of traditional martial arts schools
contact sparring with use of gloves is very rare and students
are taught to pull back their punches and kicks.
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In
order to develop kickboxing and to improve the sport,
kickboxers turned to the training, conditioning and fighting
techniques of western professional boxing. Boxers sparred
for countless rounds in preparation for their bouts. Their
sparring was virtually full contact and they took hundreds
of punches to the body and the head during sparring. This
toughened, conditioned and tempered their bodies and strengthened
their minds and will. They became mentally and physically
prepared to do battle every time they entered the ring.
They also developed their punching power by hitting the
heavy bag and the jab pads every day.
The pioneer full contact karate fighters therefore went to
the boxing gyms and learned all the secrets of the fight game,
sparring with boxers and being trained under boxing trainers.
Boxing training techniques and strategies were therefore incorporated
into and adopted by the sport of kickboxing. Kickboxers began
to improve tremendously and their techniques became more powerful
as they became much fitter and better conditioned than ever
before. The kickboxing bouts became more action packed and
exciting. The dynamic modern version of kickboxing had arrived
on the international sport circuit and was expanding and spreading
all over the world.
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