A Brief History of Karate.....
From the traditionalist point of view, Funakoshi must
be considered the father of Japanese karate-do, as it is
he who was responsible for making many important
innovations to karate-jutsu and who brought this Okinawan art to the Japanese, and later, the western world.
In 1933, Funakoshi changed the concept of ‘kara’, which
was originally written with the Chinese character
meaning ‘China hand’, by substituting another character for ‘kara’ signifying ‘void’ or ‘empty. Therefore,
the new karate-jutsu developed by Funakoshi meant
‘empty’.
Two years later, Funakoshi discarded the word ‘jutsu’
in favour of the word ‘do’ (‘the way of ’). Thus karatedo (along the lines of ju-do and aiki-do) was born in
Japan. The literal meaning is ‘empty hand way’, emphasizing the lack of conventional weapons in this fighting
art.
A Brief History of Kickboxing.....
Many laymen are under the impression that modern
day kickboxing originated in Thailand, Japan or elsewhere in the Far East, in fact, the real origins of the
sport are revealed by the real name by which it was
known, full contact karate.
During the mid-seventies various American tournament karate practitioners became frustrated with the
limitations of the then rather primitive competitive
scoring system. They wanted to find a system within
which they could apply kicks and punches to the
knockout. Full contact karate was born.
Early bouts were fought on open matted areas just as
ordinary karate matches were. Later events were staged
in regular size boxing rings. These early tournaments
produced kickboxing’s first stars, Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace, Benny Urquidez and Jeff Smith. Later the Americans really wanted to test their mettle and sent teams
of kickboxers to Japan under the banner of the WKA
(World Kickboxing Association). From this point kickboxing developed in to a true international sport
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