Is American/Full Contact Kickboxing dead in the United States?

The WCL. Love it.

I have the first season and watched some of it just a few days ago.

The rules were specifically designed to keep the action going and, in my opinion at least, it was a lot more exciting than the standard kind of kickboxing you get today on a Glory broadcast or whatever.

i disagree with that, but i think WCL was alot better than this new karate combat thing they got going on.
 
i disagree with that, but i think WCL was alot better than this new karate combat thing they got going on.

For me, the kind of kickboxing you see on Glory just seems relatively slow-paced and unimaginative. It's mostly boxing with leg kicks. Occasionally someone will get more creative than that, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. It's no slight to the fighters or anything, I'm just saying that for me the entertainment value is somewhat low.

Funny you bring up Karate Combat because I actually am quite excited about it. I created a thread about it here:

http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/k...not-exactly-kickboxing-not-quite-mma.3763755/

So different strokes, I guess.
 
@shadow_priest_x

muay thai comes from muay boran which comes from Krabi Krabong which is the thais ancient sword fighting techniques that was used back in the day for warfare before guns were invented. If you look into ancient thai warfare, you may find it more interesting. You could compare it to something like the samurai of japan or something.

74078c9aac39d3e023fcbdd51433927e.jpg
 
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For me, the kind of kickboxing you see on Glory just seems relatively slow-paced and unimaginative. It's mostly boxing with leg kicks. Occasionally someone will get more creative than that, but I'm sure you get what I'm saying. It's no slight to the fighters or anything, I'm just saying that for me the entertainment value is somewhat low.

Funny you bring up Karate Combat because I actually am quite excited about it. I created a thread about it here:

http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/k...not-exactly-kickboxing-not-quite-mma.3763755/

So different strokes, I guess.

yeah i understand your point. There was another thread about it, and @AndyMaBobs made a good video about it. One thing that I really hate about karate combat, is all their camera angles and tricks. Its more like a movie than watching a sport/fight. Why are they doing these camera angles with "thrilling" music sound effects with attacks like a movie? To make it look more exciting than it really is.
 
yeah i understand your point. There was another thread about it, and @AndyMaBobs made a good video about it. One thing that I really hate about karate combat, is all their camera angles and tricks. Its more like a movie than watching a sport/fight. Why are they doing these camera angles with "thrilling" music sound effects with attacks like a movie? To make it look more exciting than it really is.

They only did that for the first pre-season event (Genesis) that I'm pretty sure was not broadcast live.

Maybe this will be more to your liking (it's from the first live event, Inception):


 
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They only did that for the first pre-season event (Genesis) that I'm pretty sure was not broadcast live.

Maybe this will be more to your liking (it's from the first live event, Inception):




not bad but the rules they are fighting under are more or less kickboxing rules now. This fight looked like sloppy kickboxing in mma gloves and karate pants. Theres already kudo and kyokushin. Kudo without the headgear or kyokushin with face punches would be cool to see. I think Kyokushin in MMA gloves with face punching allowed would catch on alot better than this karate combat thing.
 
not bad but the rules they are fighting under are more or less kickboxing rules now. This fight looked like sloppy kickboxing in mma gloves and karate pants. Theres already kudo and kyokushin. Kudo without the headgear or kyokushin with face punches would be cool to see. I think Kyokushin in MMA gloves with face punching allowed would catch on alot better than this karate combat thing.

A little different from kickboxing because of the takedowns. You didn't get to see any TDs in that fight but they're legal and that's how Rafael Aghayev (5x WKF karate champion) won his first fight in Karate Combat. He just kept taking the guy down and GnPing him. (Fighters can do standing strikes to a downed opponent for 5 seconds.)

What I like about Karate Combat is that they're trying to do something different from everyone else. The takedowns and GnP separate it from kickboxing. The head strikes separate it from Kyokushin. The emphasis on stand up separates it from something like Kudo where extensive groundwork is allowed.

As for calling it "sloppy," c'mon bruh, you can't be a Kudo fan and complain about sloppiness. Kudo often just devolves into two dudes standing in front of each other winging haymakers into each others' space helmet.
 
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A little different from kickboxing because of the takedowns. You didn't get to see any TDs in that fight but they're legal and that's how Rafael Aghayev (5x WKF karate champion) won his first fight in Karate Combat. He just kept taking the guy down and GnPing him. (Fighters can do standing strikes to a downed opponent for 5 seconds.)

What I like about Karate Combat is that they're trying to do something different from everyone else. The takedowns and GnP separate it from kickboxing. The head strikes separate it from Kyokushin. The emphasis on stand up separates it from something like Kudo where extensive groundwork is allowed.

As for calling it "sloppy," c'mon bruh, you can't be a Kudo fan and complain about sloppiness. Kudo often just devolves into two dudes standing in front of each other winging haymakers into each others' space helmet.

yeah i was aware of the takedowns in it. and the 5 second GNP. Andy did a pretty good job of destroying that concept due to the rule set. I think takedowns and ground fighting are good ideas, as is limiting the ground fighting time, so it doesnt become a BJJ match, like many MMA fights do. I can agree with them trying something different but I predict this thing doing worse than the WCL did.

the kudo i have seen vs the karate combat i have seen (including aghayev fight) kudo looked alot cleaner to me. The fight you posted was alot of wild sloppy hands down punching, winging haymakers at each other without space helmets, lol. Im not knocking karate i think its good stuff. Rules change fights. It would be interesting to see a kudo guy fight mma, or a kudo fight with no gear, or even a kudo guy fight under MT rules. All the same attacks are there more or less, but they are done a little differently.

i can tell your into TMA's which is cool. I dunno if you saw my post about ancient thai warfare, look into it I think you will like it.
 
I can agree with them trying something different but I predict this thing doing worse than the WCL did.

I will agree that their commercial prospects are very much in question. I have no idea how long Karate Combat will last. If the organization is still around in 5 years I'll be surprised, yeah.

the kudo i have seen vs the karate combat i have seen (including aghayev fight) kudo looked alot cleaner to me.

I have always thought a lot of Kudo matches looked pretty sloppy, but with that said, I still like Kudo. Technical refinement is not something that is a must for me. Frankly, I'd rather see Mike Perry knock someone's head into the stands than watch Tarec Saffiedine outpoint someone in a three-round snoozer.

If a fighter can be technical AND entertaining, like Stephen Thompson, then I'm especially down with them. But I'll take a fun brawler over a technical guy with a boring style any day of the week.

That Karate Combat fight may not be the height of refinement, but there were still some good skills on display and I was entertained by it.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is a new organization and I think most of the fighters are still pretty new to full-contact. So I say let it all develop. Just give it time for everything to come along.

It would be interesting to see a kudo guy fight mma, or a kudo fight with no gear, or even a kudo guy fight under MT rules. All the same attacks are there more or less, but they are done a little differently.

The thing about Kudo is that it's so damn close to MMA that if they took the helmets off and held their competitions in a cage I'm not even sure you could tell the difference.

i can tell your into TMA's which is cool.

I've always been interested in anything involving martial arts, but especially in the last few years I've come back around to being particularly enthusiastic about traditional karate (Shotokan in particular). What I like about Shotokan (or any kind of traditional karate) is that there are so many angles to it, so many different avenues to explore.

I'm 36-years-old and have some injuries that make any kind of serious competition unfeasible, so these days I am just looking for a martial art that I feel like can a) be effective in a self-defense situation, b) offer a sports component that is suitable for me considering the state of my body, and c) is something that I can grow old with and continue to explore on levels that go beyond just the combat effectiveness of the style.

For me, I've found that in Shotokan. Other people's mileage may vary.

Perhaps if I was 20-years-old and had a body that wasn't in need of patching up then I'd instead be training in an MMA gym somewhere.

I dunno if you saw my post about ancient thai warfare, look into it I think you will like it.

I think I missed that one. Can you point me to it?
 
That Karate Combat fight may not be the height of refinement, but there were still some good skills on display and I was entertained by it.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is a new organization and I think most of the fighters are still pretty new to full-contact. So I say let it all develop. Just give it time for everything to come along.

the skills i saw looked like sloppy kickboxing in mma gloves, leg kick, head kick, than drop the hands and throw wild punches, i really dislike this because it takes away the sport and technique of things and makes it just look wild and sloppy fight, which it is, anyone can get in there and swing wildy and connect at some point, using your techniques and skills is what makes it a sport and seperates it from a "fight".

give it some time to develop and its going to develop into kickboxing more or less. It would be cool to see guys fight in kickboxing rules, that have a strong karate background, so they can use roundhouse kicks in both styles for example. But thats like comparing on orange to a tangerine rather than apples to oranges if you get what i mean. Have you heard of Serkan Yilmaz? Look him up, very entertaining K1 fighter with a strong TKD background.

The cool thing about Kudo is the guys are fighting full rules, but they are strong TMA based, so you get to see what and how effective TMA's are at a full contact MMA style fight. Thats pretty much the gripe for most TMA guys is that they say it can be effective (which it obviously can) in a "real" fight. So yeah it would basically turn into "mma" but it would be MMA using TMA's. The sport of MMA has already weeded out all the martial arts that are ineffective for the most part. But like i said it would be cool to see someone with a strong TMA background fight it. Conor Mcgregor uses much more of a TKD or karate style kicks than MT for example. Another analogy i could use would be I can speak english and spanish so if I speak spanish, I first think of the sentence in my head in english, than i say it in spanish. If spanish was my first language, it would be the other way around.

So take a guy with strong TMA skills, let him fight full contact MMA with no pads in a GI, that would show the world what TMAs can do. IMO i dont see karate combat showing the world how effective karate can be, i see it doing the opposite, i was excited to see karate combat until i actually watched it, and your average UFC bro wont like it either, maybe further hurting karates reputation. To me, the best way to get the public to realize karate is great, would be to have Kyokushin with punches to the face, or kudo with no pads. I hope that makes sense on what Im trying to say as far as guys having a TMA mindset competing full rules.
 
I will agree that their commercial prospects are very much in question. I have no idea how long Karate Combat will last. If the organization is still around in 5 years I'll be surprised, yeah.



I have always thought a lot of Kudo matches looked pretty sloppy, but with that said, I still like Kudo. Technical refinement is not something that is a must for me. Frankly, I'd rather see Mike Perry knock someone's head into the stands than watch Tarec Saffiedine outpoint someone in a three-round snoozer.

If a fighter can be technical AND entertaining, like Stephen Thompson, then I'm especially down with them. But I'll take a fun brawler over a technical guy with a boring style any day of the week.

That Karate Combat fight may not be the height of refinement, but there were still some good skills on display and I was entertained by it.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this is a new organization and I think most of the fighters are still pretty new to full-contact. So I say let it all develop. Just give it time for everything to come along.



The thing about Kudo is that it's so damn close to MMA that if they took the helmets off and held their competitions in a cage I'm not even sure you could tell the difference.



I've always been interested in anything involving martial arts, but especially in the last few years I've come back around to being particularly enthusiastic about traditional karate (Shotokan in particular). What I like about Shotokan (or any kind of traditional karate) is that there are so many angles to it, so many different avenues to explore.

I'm 36-years-old and have some injuries that make any kind of serious competition unfeasible, so these days I am just looking for a martial art that I feel like can a) be effective in a self-defense situation, b) offer a sports component that is suitable for me considering the state of my body, and c) is something that I can grow old with and continue to explore on levels that go beyond just the combat effectiveness of the style.

For me, I've found that in Shotokan. Other people's mileage may vary.

Perhaps if I was 20-years-old and had a body that wasn't in need of patching up then I'd instead be training in an MMA gym somewhere.



I think I missed that one. Can you point me to it?

@shadow_priest_x

muay thai comes from muay boran which comes from Krabi Krabong which is the thais ancient sword fighting techniques that was used back in the day for warfare before guns were invented. If you look into ancient thai warfare, you may find it more interesting. You could compare it to something like the samurai of japan or something.

74078c9aac39d3e023fcbdd51433927e.jpg
 
the skills i saw looked like sloppy kickboxing in mma gloves, leg kick, head kick, than drop the hands and throw wild punches, i really dislike this because it takes away the sport and technique of things and makes it just look wild and sloppy fight, which it is, anyone can get in there and swing wildy and connect at some point, using your techniques and skills is what makes it a sport and seperates it from a "fight".

I give them a little more credit than that.

I thought it was pretty clear that Ibrahim was the superior technical fighter. I don't think he repeatedly hit Quayhagen while not getting marked up himself by luck. I think he was actually the better combatant with superior speed and accuracy.

Have you heard of Serkan Yilmaz? Look him up, very entertaining K1 fighter with a strong TKD background.

Yeah, I've seen some of his highlights. He would do some cool shit. Too bad he didn't fare better than he did in terms of actually winning fights.

The cool thing about Kudo is the guys are fighting full rules, but they are strong TMA based, so you get to see what and how effective TMA's are at a full contact MMA style fight. Thats pretty much the gripe for most TMA guys is that they say it can be effective (which it obviously can) in a "real" fight. So yeah it would basically turn into "mma" but it would be MMA using TMA's. The sport of MMA has already weeded out all the martial arts that are ineffective for the most part. But like i said it would be cool to see someone with a strong TMA background fight it. Conor Mcgregor uses much more of a TKD or karate style kicks than MT for example. Another analogy i could use would be I can speak english and spanish so if I speak spanish, I first think of the sentence in my head in english, than i say it in spanish. If spanish was my first language, it would be the other way around.

So take a guy with strong TMA skills, let him fight full contact MMA with no pads in a GI, that would show the world what TMAs can do. IMO i dont see karate combat showing the world how effective karate can be, i see it doing the opposite, i was excited to see karate combat until i actually watched it, and your average UFC bro wont like it either, maybe further hurting karates reputation. To me, the best way to get the public to realize karate is great, would be to have Kyokushin with punches to the face, or kudo with no pads. I hope that makes sense on what Im trying to say as far as guys having a TMA mindset competing full rules.

Well Machida was the first guy to come around and really show that a traditional art could be effective in MMA. Unless a lot of other guys who grew up doing one martial art or another, when you watch Lyoto move it's obvious that he is still clinging tightly to his Shotokan roots. He even runs a karate school in California!

Gunnar Nelson and Robert Whittaker both have Goju-Ryu backgrounds and you can see it in the way they strike. Nelson's striking looks very karate-esque and Whittaker has openly said that Goju-Ryu is still the basis of his striking style.

Katsunori Kikuno is a Kyokushin guy and is still very deeply embedded in the world of karate.

Then you have the sport karate guys like Stephen Thompson, who fight very much like they are still fighting in point tournaments, except now they hit harder and know how to defend takedowns.

So I feel like the traditional styles are fairly well represented today in MMA. Certainly that is the case much more so now than it was 10 years ago.
 
I don't know why TMA guys aren't out there championing for guys like Tenshin Nasukawa, Masaaki Noiri, Takeru, etc...

They are utilizing a more effective style of Karate in a more challenging format of competition. I guess they need gi's and dragons and ninja stars and shit to really fill that void.
 
It certainly seems to be.

I enjoy going back and watching the old shiny pants kickboxing of the 70s, 80s and 90s, mostly because a lot of those guys came from karate and TKD backgrounds and you can see a lot of kicks that you just don't usually see in kickboxing today.

I get that a lot of people don't really like it because its rules are more restrictive than MT but I think those rules just allow for a different kind of fight, one that's entertaining to watch and looks like a lot of fun to do.

From what I understand there are still organizations that fight under this ruleset on Europe but American Kickboxing seems to have all but evaporated in, well, America!

I've even looked for FC Kickboxing schools and have found pretty much nothing at all. At least in my city and some other cities I've looked at it's all MT.

Is there anywhere to still train in FC Kickboxing in the US? Anywhere to compete under that ruleset?

Funny, I came here to post about American Kickboxing. I miss it as well.

It's an extremely effective style that unfortunately lost out to Muay Thai, which in my opinion is a vastly inferior style in most ways. AK had a couple glaring weaknesses that they myopically refused to fix, lack of leg kicks most famously.

I'd absolutely love to see a resurgence of this underappreciated style.

I have also tried and failed to find local schools.

God bless the both of you!

I am a huge fan and love the flexibility and footwork of American kickboxing/full contact karate.

Check out Jerry Trimble and Dan Judah father was a world champion in pka kickboxing.
 
not bad but the rules they are fighting under are more or less kickboxing rules now. This fight looked like sloppy kickboxing in mma gloves and karate pants. Theres already kudo and kyokushin. Kudo without the headgear or kyokushin with face punches would be cool to see. I think Kyokushin in MMA gloves with face punching allowed would catch on alot better than this karate combat thing.

Will this atleast make you happy?
http://www.shinkarate.net/
https://www.youtube.com/user/shinkaratek2k3k4



This is the 1999 event that Nicolas Pettas won. ShinKarate was originally a breeding for Kyokushinkai to try fighting under K-1 rules so they could make the transition into K-1 easier.
 
Kyokushin with boxing gloves and punches to the face = awesome. If this is what the world thought of when they hear the word karate would be dope.

I know this is going to sound like a crazy idea, but what I would like to see is more karate styles adopt multiple forms of competition.

Kyokushin has probably done this to the greatest extent, but even within Kyokushin from what I understand it's difficult to find competition opportunities outside of the standard knockdown ruleset.

At the very least two types of competition should be available within any organization for any karate practitioner:

1. Traditional point competition. I know a lot of people don't see the value in point fighting, but guys like Machida and Thompson have shown that point fighting can help develop important skills that transfer over to other kinds of fighting. Furthermore, a lot of people who do karate simply are not going to want to do full-contact fighting. That's fine, I think. Point competition can be their outlet.

2. Something like what you see in that Shin Karate video. Plus takedowns maybe.

This way the people who only want to do point fighting can do that and the people who only want to do full-contact can do that, and the whole who want to do both will have that option as well.
 
I know this is going to sound like a crazy idea, but what I would like to see is more karate styles adopt multiple forms of competition.

Kyokushin has probably done this to the greatest extent, but even within Kyokushin from what I understand it's difficult to find competition opportunities outside of the standard knockdown ruleset.

At the very least two types of competition should be available within any organization for any karate practitioner:

1. Traditional point competition. I know a lot of people don't see the value in point fighting, but guys like Machida and Thompson have shown that point fighting can help develop important skills that transfer over to other kinds of fighting. Furthermore, a lot of people who do karate simply are not going to want to do full-contact fighting. That's fine, I think. Point competition can be their outlet.

2. Something like what you see in that Shin Karate video. Plus takedowns maybe.

This way the people who only want to do point fighting can do that and the people who only want to do full-contact can do that, and the whole who want to do both will have that option as well.

number 2 = kudo without head gear.
 
Top K-1 fighter Masaaki Noiri came from Shin Karate for example...

 
number 2 = kudo without head gear.

Well, if it's a karate competition I'm not sure that you should be able to follow them to the ground.

The thing about kudo is that even though it's called "karate" I'm not sure I really consider it a style of karate. My understanding is the founder blended Kyokushin and Judo (hence Kudo) to create his style. So already it's a hybrid style because of the judo, but more importantly, some of the hallmarks of karate--like kata, for instance--were jettisoned. If I saw some guys practicing Kudo, and they didn't have a gi on, would I think it's karate or something else? Probably something else.

Throws have long been a part of traditional karate training but not ground work and submissions. So if you allow groundwork and submissions in competition you're starting to get away from karate and it's becoming more like just another MMA kind of deal. I don't have a problem at all with that kind of ruleset, but I think I might have a problem with calling it karate.
 

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