How come Americans are not in same level as europeans in kickboxing?

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I can not remember one american kickboxer who did well in K-1 back in the days or Glory

The best kickboxers in heavyweight are from Netherlands, Ukraine, France Russia Belarus etc


Is it because eastern martial arts are not that big in U. S as I think?
 
America's not great at boxing anymore either. American's in fairness though were pretty good at the full contact kickboxing (no low kicks) back in the day - but they never really got going in K-1 rules.
 
AndyMaBobs said:
America's not great at boxing anymore either. American's in fairness though were pretty good at the full contact kickboxing (no low kicks) back in the day - but they never really got going in K-1 rules.
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WTF are you talking about? I'd understand if you specified HW Boxing but you just said "Boxing" so I guess guys like Terence Crawford, Errol Spence Jr, and Mikey Garcia are just run of the mill boxers to you? As for K-1 and American HWs the Kickboxing fad had already started to die down by the time K-1 started to pick up so we was left with guys like Rick Roufus and Duke Roufus moving over to that style and not being able to make it to the top. Then you had fighters like Carter Williams and Dewey Cooper who just never lived up to their potential. Finally we were left with the American slots being filled with freakshow fighters like Sapp and Mighty Mo. I'm sure it's due to the same reason we aren't seeing any really good Americans playing Soccer its not something that too much ppl care about here.
 
You could argue that the amount of non american top boxers has increased but i’ve gotten the impression most of them train in the US?
 
US is a big country, in total there are a lot of people training in muay thai/kickboxing gyms. I think there is a lack of good trainers though since those sports are quite new over there. I always see videos of ”trainers” tin the US who own a gym giving advice but 90% of the time the advice is flawed. The good gyms are few and far between

France, sweden, uk, spain, italy and some countries in eastern europe probably each have less practitioners per country than the US, but there are more good gyms and good trainers.

I guess all the good trainers and talents go to mma aswell
 
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Kanka said:
You could argue that the amount of non american top boxers has increased but i’ve gotten the impression most of them train in the US?
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Boxing has been growing in the UK too. A few years ago they had the most world titles of any country(usually America does). Also you see more boxers from Africa and SEA reaching the world level than in the past. Ive never heard that most of them train in America. Also pro boxing was banned by the soviet union so now we have powerhouse countries like Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan emerging.

To answer the OP: America was historically less exposed to low kicks(which Europe and Japan got from MT and Kyokushin), so when K-1 was getting big they didn't have a star to grow popularity.
 
Some Americans competed in K1 like Maurice Smith, Duane Ludwig who were also MMA and UFC fighters but only US regional champs. The structured school wrestling programs breeds a lot more MMA fighters than kickboxers. Kickboxing is like soccer in US something kids and soccer moms do for exercise but it's not a popular sport. I'd say it's even less popular than hockey, motocross, snowboarding, or any other extreme sports. Boxing and MMA are the only combat sports that's heavily promoted and outside of a young niche demographic still aren't mainstream for the most part. Americans just care about American football NFL and basketball NBA sometimes and just because they represent their state or city and casual sport fans don't care about anything else.
 
boxing is not exactly a popular participation sport here in the US either. But the ones that do take it serious, have a system within they can move up, and become real professional. There is no homegrown KB promotion for KBers to follow through with. A lot of Americans do KB at an MA place for a hobby, and if want to go pro, do so in MMA since we have UFC.

We have a number of Canadien, and Murkan MMA fighers with "KB" background like Sam Stout, Uriah Hall, Donald Cerrone etc, etc. But I dont think they ever fought in Thailand, Japan, or big KB promotion.
 
The best American Muay Thai fighter was trained by Steve Mazzagatti
 
It's not popular in the US. It was in 70's and 80's and you had alot of American promotions and fighters, but it lost steam in late 80-early 90's and never recovered.

Now there are very few American based promotions and fighters. Most of the people who are serious about it only do it as part of their MMA training and have no ambitions of becoming pro kickboxers. If tommorow MMA was banned worldwide, then you'd see alot of American MMA fighters having success in kickboxing or boxing or pro grappling or whatever.

Contrary to what people here believe soccer is extremely popular in the US. So the US doesn't really have any excuse for failing so badly there.
 
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For a start K-1 style kickboxing only started to pick when MMA came about, so a lot of Americans with interest in combat sport started focusing on MMA instead.

As many others have said, it's also down to the level of instruction available. Kyokushin and Muay Thai have been a lot more available in Europe than in the US with great level of instruction, and that's pretty much where K-1 style Kickboxing comes from.
 
The countries that do well all have big competitive structures to build fighters in this sport specifically. This doesn't exist in the US. Most guys that give Kickboxing a shot from here come from different backgrounds like MMA, Muay Thai (also a weak scene) and TMA. For HW there is no talent pool to even build a guy up in, they can never find fights.
 
A ton of reasons:

A different style of Karate already took hold here, MMA is the most popular combat sport, Boxing already has a long history here, US Wrestling pushes many who are interested in combat sports to grappling instead of striking, lack of high level trainers, not much room in the market here, historical lack of exposure to the ruleset, the fragmented fanbase(s) of Kickboxing inhibiting growth, confusion between rulesets from newcomers/casuals, a long history that lacks American presence so many Americans don't think the competitors are high level, perceived lack of skill from Kickboxers by the casual combat sports fanbase, no proper infrastructure to grow the sport, corruption and greed, etc. etc. etc.
 
I mean it seems that even in Europe Muay Thai and Karate are a lot more popular than Kickboxing, at least K-1 style Kickboxing that is. From experience living in Paris, London and Stockholm, they all have stacks of Muay Thai gyms and Karate dojos including Kyokushin, but finding good K-1 style Kickboxing gyms is rather rare, usually they're just MT gyms that also prepare fighters for K-1 rule fights. Unless of course you're in the Netherlands or maybe Eastern Europe.
 
Julius_Caesar said:
Lack of interest.

Imagine some rich American decided to copy Chatri Sityodtong by bringing over a load of Thai MuayThai trainers to the US, split them up so its 3 trainers per gym for several gyms and place those gyms in Rough neighborhoods around America. Run down looking gyms like Kiatmoo9 before Yokkao hooked them up. Then he had those gyms compete with each other every week and even created his own amateur ranking system from these competitions. Talented fighters will come and go but some will stay. Once they're experienced enough they'll turn pro. The ones who stand out will hopefully sign to major promotions like Glory or Onefc. All of the sudden you have several Americans ranking high in these promotions and naturally more Americans will start tuning in to kickboxing which would also mean more Americans training at the gyms their idol is from.

Seems like a lot of effort for a sport that doesn't pay well but guarantee it would work. This is what happens a lot of the time in Boxing. A lot of the top American boxers started off as kids in a rough neighborhood who started amateur boxing.
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Just curious has Evolve MMA produced any good muay thai fighter from scratch?
 
Julius_Caesar said:
Lack of interest.

Imagine some rich American decided to copy Chatri Sityodtong by bringing over a load of Thai MuayThai trainers to the US, split them up so its 3 trainers per gym for several gyms and place those gyms in Rough neighborhoods around America. Run down looking gyms like Kiatmoo9 before Yokkao hooked them up. Then he had those gyms compete with each other every week and even created his own amateur ranking system from these competitions. Talented fighters will come and go but some will stay. Once they're experienced enough they'll turn pro. The ones who stand out will hopefully sign to major promotions like Glory or Onefc. All of the sudden you have several Americans ranking high in these promotions and naturally more Americans will start tuning in to kickboxing which would also mean more Americans training at the gyms their idol is from.

Seems like a lot of effort for a sport that doesn't pay well but guarantee it would work. This is what happens a lot of the time in Boxing. A lot of the top American boxers started off as kids in a rough neighborhood who started amateur boxing.
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What good is training if there is essentially ZERO Amature and Pro Kickboxing scenes in the US? What you mapped out would just give MMA guys better "striking training".

Training is probably the least of issues here. Fighters get better from actual fighting. That's why all the Americans that go into Glory have less than 10 fights to their name and ultimately fail while their Euro counterparts have upwards of 100 fights.
 
Snubnoze707 said:
What good is training if there is essentially ZERO Amature and Pro Kickboxing scenes in the US? What you mapped out would just give MMA guys better "striking training".

Training is probably the least of issues here. Fighters get better from actual fighting. That's why all the Americans that go into Glory have less than 10 fights to their name and ultimately fail while their Euro counterparts have upwards of 100 fights.
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That's the point of creating several gyms. The gyms would compete among themselves until they turn pro. You just have to be consistent with interclub competitions.
 
Perhaps the talent pool is big enough but the distance fighters would have to travel to fight each others is too big. In comparison an amateur in the uk, netherlands, france just have to travel a couple of hours at most and can get fights pretty easily. More intense local competition would also help developing the US fighters for sure. Of course the training is also important.
 
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