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MT/KB NA/Europe Does american kickboxing still exist?

Pierce 34 said:
The type of kickboxing where they banned kicks below the leg and it was a lot of Karate/TKD spinning kicks involved

Rick Rufus come to mind. Any American kickboxing league still in place?
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.yes it's called WAKO. They have different rule sets
 
It does in some ways in UK.
Hard to find it though as it's not easily advertised other than "kickboxing".
I think PKU or something.
 
American kickboxing is generally referred to as "full contact". It's practiced almost exclusively in Europe (mostly just in the UK, Ireland, France and the former Soviet states). It's almost never seen in the US.

To my knowledge the only "full contact" fights put on here are in the IKF world championships and the WAKO USA national championships.
I've never been to the WAKO tournament, but I've been to the IKF tournament a few times. There were, at most, 4 full contact brackets on average.

The IKF actually discontinued it for 3 out of the 4 tournaments I've been too. They're apparently bringing it back for this year's tournament, but I would expect there to be very few people who sign up for it. Most who do will probably end up getting moved into a low kick or K-1 rules bracket anyway.
 
No leagues but they still have some promotions that have kickboxing fights with moon shoes along with other types of matches. You might have a card that has moon shoes kickboxing, MMA and kickboxing.

I can't remember the promotion but many years ago I saw a match with crazy rules. It was moon shoes kickboxing but they had an insane amount of rounds. I think it was like 10?
 
NoSmilez said:
No leagues but they still have some promotions that have kickboxing fights with moon shoes along with other types of matches. You might have a card that has moon shoes kickboxing, MMA and kickboxing.

I can't remember the promotion but many years ago I saw a match with crazy rules. It was moon shoes kickboxing but they had an insane amount of rounds. I think it was like 10?
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Title fights in full contact style fights were 12 rounds
 
Pierce 34 said:
The type of kickboxing where they banned kicks below the leg and it was a lot of Karate/TKD spinning kicks involved

Rick Rufus come to mind. Any American kickboxing league still in place?
Click to expand...
Member when rick roufus got his fat american ass kick by a little Thai. Chanpuek broke his leg and kicked his ass.

Edit: lol the wigga of sherdog is angry at me spamming agry faces, calm down paddy bitch jamaican no get angrey mi man 😂💩
 
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Saku'sEar said:
The lamest form of kickboxing lol 'ish ish ish dont kick my legs please ish ish ish jeej i scored a point ish ish ish'.
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Funny thing is that back in the 1980's at WKA events, fighters that threw lots of low kicks were booed in favor of guys that threw high kicks.
 
Hell Yeah it does...

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It still exists in Europe, both with fullcontact rules and semicontact. Sometimes with lowkicks allowed and sometimes not.

In Sweden however Muay Thai and K1 is the most common rulesets.
 
Am I correct in thinking that American kickboxing died when Europeans began fighting and the Dutch style blew the karate style out of the water?
 
TJ Dillashank said:
Am I correct in thinking that American kickboxing died when Europeans began fighting and the Dutch style blew the karate style out of the water?
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The PKA went defunct in the mid-80s and the decline started there, but the establishment of K-1 and increasing popularity of Muay Thai definitely were strong contributors to the death spiral, and it didn't help that American Kickboxing having multiple sanctioning bodies at that point when the sport was already a bit small meant that there was no unified front to push back against the tide (i.e., PKA vs K-1). I wouldn't say it died  because of K-1 or Muay Thai though, it was already on the way out, just more slowly
 
Monte Moku said:
The PKA went defunct in the mid-80s and the decline started there, but the establishment of K-1 and increasing popularity of Muay Thai definitely were strong contributors to the death spiral, and it didn't help that American Kickboxing having multiple sanctioning bodies at that point when the sport was already a bit small meant that there was no unified front to push back against the tide (i.e., PKA vs K-1). I wouldn't say it died  because of K-1 or Muay Thai though, it was already on the way out, just more slowly
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It really is strange to me how bad American kickboxing is today. They love their boxing and MMA so theres a love for combat but so do England and Australia, which are both countries with pretty strong muay thai and kickboxing as far as western countries are concerned. I can only think of Kevin Ross as the only American who found alot of success. I would have also thought the movie Kickboxer would have made a few fans.
 
TJ Dillashank said:
It really is strange to me how bad American kickboxing is today. They love their boxing and MMA so theres a love for combat but so do England and Australia, which are both countries with pretty strong muay thai and kickboxing as far as western countries are concerned. I can only think of Kevin Ross as the only American who found alot of success. I would have also thought the movie Kickboxer would have made a few fans.
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Kevin Ross didn't have that much success to be honest, maybe compared to the other American kickboxers, but if you rank him among all fighters of his weight class if his era he was probably not even top50.

I believe it's a cultural thing. Europe has much deeper roots for Asian martial arts and trainers coming from Asia, so they are more used to kicks and kicking, so naturally turn to sports where you can kick like Kickboxing and Muay Thai, while I feel Americans much prefer punch fighting like boxing and bare knuckle boxing and also grappling. There are also a ton more legit trainers and competitors for those arts than in America, so a deeper talent pool. A lot of Europeans don't like grappling so much and stick to those arts rather than going to MMA, while grappling seems much more natural in the US where you grapple at school.
 
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