History of Point Fighting
The word ” KICK BOXING ” ( literally ” go with kick and punch”) was born in USA in 1974 with the name ” FULL CONTACT KARATE”.
Exactly, it was the 14th september of 1974 when in Los Angeles Cow Sport Arena it was presented the first world professional championship that it was disputed by a little group of Americans and European fighters.
In 1976, the same people who promoted the first world professional championship, founded the World Association of all style Karate Organizations (WAKO).
In 1978, the first real world championship took place in Berlin, and subsequently in Tampa (Florida) and so on every 2 years.
In 1980, some contradictions between FULL CONTACT KARATE and the existing Karate federations raised and in order to avoid political and sports problems, WAKO decided to remove the word ” KARATE ” associated to full contact and it born the word ” KICK BOXING”.
This new word immediately gave the idea of what practitioners was doing: go with kick and punch. However, the acronym WAKO remained as the original logo, but together with the words “World Association of Kickboxing Organization”.
Moreover, another reason why the word ” karate” was removed from the association with the word kickboxing is that beyond full-contact, kickboxing had adopted other sports specialities whose names are: semi-contact and light-contact.
Consequently, the word ” kickboxing “, gives a generic name from which branches off the other specialities: Point Fighting, light-contact, full-contact, low-kick, musical forms, k1 rules, aero-kickboxing and kick-light.
In particular, the peculiarity of POINT FIGHTING, our discipline, is that the fight stopped as soon the athlete hits the opponent and the scores he/she receives depends on the technique he/she has used.
Nowadays, the current president of the Italian Federation FIKBMS is Mr.Donato Milano and the one of the WAKO federation is Mr.Borislav Pelević (Serbia).
Kick Boxing is a successful discipline spreads around the world and it is practiced everyday by millions of people.
In fact, today WAKO comprises 110 countries affiliates in the five continents and it is the only kickboxing organization recognized by GAISF, OKA. Moreover, it has the only one organization which has already participated at the African Games and at the Asian Indoor Games in 2007.