The term kickboxing can make the history difficult to understand due to the different interpretations and form of kickboxing. Some of earliest form of kickboxing included indochinese martial arts, French Savate boxing and Muay Boran, which developed into modern Muay Thai.
It was during the 1950’s that a Japanese karateka named Tatduo Yamada first invented a new sport that combined karate and Muay Thai; A modern form of competition.
During the early 1960’s, competitions between karate and Muay Thai began, which allowed for rule modifications to take place. By the middle of the 1960’s, the first true kickboxing events were being held in Osaka, Japan.
By the 1970’s and 1980’s , the sport expanded beyond Japan to north America and Europe, at which time many most prominent governing bodies were formed.
In Japan the sport was widely popular and was regularly televised, but lost its popularity during the 1980’s due to poor ratings.
In the North America, the sport had unclear rules, so kickboxing and full contact karate were essentially the same sport.
The sport was not so popular in Europe and did not thrive until the 1990’s, the sport has been mostly dominated by Japanese K-1 with some competitions coming from other promotions and mostly pre-existing governing bodies.
There has been an increased amount of participation and exposure in the mass media fitness and self-defense industry due to the growing popularity of kickboxing competitions.