Kickboxing History

Kickboxing is martial arts that are commonly practiced all over the world. The style of kickboxing usually involves kicking and punching the opponent. An individual may take part in kickboxing for a number of reasons which include self defense and fitness. However there is a clear distinction between the two aforementioned. Fitness kickboxing has limited physical contact, whereas full contact kickboxing involves kicking and punching the opponent. In mixed martial arts, the use of full contact kickboxing is a common occurrence. As such we shall focus on full contact kickboxing.

In Kickboxing the fighter fights bare chest, barefoot and wears either kickboxing pants or shorts. However in the case of a female fighter normally wears a tank top and shorts. Kickboxing is usually practiced as an individual style, but in most cases kickboxing is just an event and set of rules of by which fighters of other disciplines may compete with each other.

In many disciplines of martial arts, the real origin of a particular art is usually unclear. The same can be said for full contact kickboxing, however, one can always trace back some sort of history and roughly estimate where the art was derived from. In the early to mid 1950's, a martial artist with the name of Osamu Noguchi was a famous boxer in the country of Japan. Osamu Noguchi traveled all over the world and the martial art that caught his eye was May Thai.

Also around this time a fighter named, Tatsuo Yamada who was the founder of Kempo Karate, took a liking to Muay Thai as well. Therefore he tried to establish a fighting art which allowed opponents to target their strikes directly at the adversary and make contact. This was usually disallowed in Karate sparring and competitions.

In comparison to Japanese Karate, the fighters are usually not allowed to make contact with each other.  However in the 1950's, Tatsuo Yamada created what Karate boxing which combined full contact striking and kicking. This style has been commonly referred to as Japanese Kickboxing.

Both Yamada and Noguchi joined forces and worked to develop their style and test it against other martial arts disciplines. Both Yamada and Noguchi devised and organized tournament where their pitted their style of kickboxing with the Muay Thai Boxing style. It was actually Osamu Noguchi that coined the term kickboxing and after several matches, the growth of this new martial art spread rapidly.

Prior to Noguchi's death in 1967, he had also created the Kickboxing Association. This led to a structured martial arts which could be thought with a syllabus. Some have argued that it was after this event the full contact kickboxing began to become popular in mainstream Japan as well as other countries like the US. However, when Tashadi Sawamura took over the organization kickboxing went through a period of unpopularity; however it bounced back after a few years. This was mainly because, of the discontinuation of strikes such as the elbow strike, knee strike and clinch fighting. The reason was that it made the fights more exiting due to the continuation of the action. It was not long before kickboxing's popularity went international and spread to other countries through out the world.