Full contact karate organizations and the future of karate competitions

[Mitlov]

Personally, I don't much care for Karate Combat, but I'm also looking at things from a particular point of view, which I can admit is somewhat limiting. All of the competition circuits for karate are based on the approach to karate that was developed by Funakoshi Gigo and his ilk in the mid 20th Century, and is a very poor representation of the types of fighting methods that are actually part of karate. You can add contact, and that makes it a better representation of fighting, but it doesn't make it a better representation of old-style karate. Unfortunately, sparring methods that are more representative of those methods aren't very good spectator sports, at least for the wider audience with an attraction toward karate.

Disagree. Gigo Funakoshi might be responsible for WKF-style competitions, and Karate Combat (since it's taking practitioners who historically have trained for WKF competition) is still going to have a WKF flavor despite being full-contact. But Kyokushin and Enshin competitions (and all the other knockdown karate competitions) have a very un-Shotokan approach. And then there's the whole kickboxing scene that grew out of the Professional Karate Association in the 1970s with Bill Superfoot Wallace and those folks...

 

[Noah_Legel]

Disagree. Gigo Funakoshi might be responsible for WKF-style competitions, and Karate Combat (since it's taking practitioners who historically have trained for WKF competition) is still going to have a WKF flavor despite being full-contact. But Kyokushin and Enshin competitions (and all the other knockdown karate competitions) have a very un-Shotokan approach. And then there's the whole kickboxing scene that grew out of the Professional Karate Association in the 1970s with Bill Superfoot Wallace and those folks...

Kyokushin/Enshin/Seido/etc. is a bit of a different beast, yes, because Oyama integrated the irikumi-go method of sparring from Goju-Ryu, which brought the range a bit closer and, of course, included hard contact. It still doesn't represent the older methods of karate, though, and was still influenced by the Budo-fication of karate going on at that time. As for the PKA and American kickboxing, that grew out of the exact same type of competition that the WKF grew out of--separate organizations, yes, but the same type of sparring. The main difference that I have seen is that older point fighting either allowed contact, or required light contact to be made in a controlled manner such that the strike COULD be extended into the target to deliver a powerful blow, while WKF competitions require fighters to make contact at the very end of their strike, with no additional travel left to deliver a real blow. It's easier to transition into full contact fighting from a method where you get into the proper range than one where you don't.

 

[CB Jones]

I’m not a big fan of the WKF. I enjoy watching the old PKA and USKA type sparring.

But for me, Karate Combat fixes the problem with WKF by making it full contact. I hope to see more non-WKF karateka fighting in it to give it even more flavor

 

[GojuTommy]

Necro

What I think would go a long way to bringing karate more popularity in the combats sports sphere;
Full contact point fight, and karate combat to partner with local/regional promoters to set up ammy and semi-pro KC fights.