People are weird. There are those who eschew violence altogether, so they steer clear of combat sports, which is understandable. Then there are those who are connoisseurs of violence like myself, so they consume every combat sport under the sun and even participate and compete in them. Finally, there are those who are somewhat into that violence and are casually receptive to combat sports, but there’s a gaping hole in the shape of kickboxing.
There’s something about kickboxing that keeps it from breaking through like mixed martial arts did. When you really think about it, MMA can be hit or miss since you can either have fireworks all over the cage or a slumber party on mostly one side of the cage. Meanwhile, boxing can be just as iffy since that sport has become a lot more about avoiding losses than chasing wins.
People seem to like action, and they’re jazzed when you mention boxing or mixed martial arts. However, their eyes glaze over when asked about the happy medium that is kickboxing. There really is something about kickboxing that keeps it from being able to fully cross over and hit that peak popularity in the mainstream that makes even the most cynical of skeptics take notice.
It’s not to say that kickboxing can’t have a multi-million dollar main event because that has certainly happened, but it can only happen in certain parts of the world away from America, where most people’s consciousness resides.
The hypothetical appeal of kickboxing as a striking sport can be compared to the benefits of open source software. They both seem like good ideas and a lot of people do take to them, but you end up having pockets of interest that are nice to have, but only a few could ever get into.
To that end, maybe boxing is like Windows and MMA is like MacOS? I’m not sure anymore if this analogy still works, but I submit to you that kickboxing is the Linux of
Take note that these are the thoughts and opinions of someone who has been slipping in his devotion to combat sports, especially now with his more preoccupied life. It’s a pretty old idea, and it’s not that controversial of an opinion.
Comparing the Combat Sports
Boxing has been a mainstay since the turn of the 20th century and had been monolithic for many decades until other combat sports sprang up to challenge its reign, especially mixed martial arts. You can understand why boxing, despite constant claims of its impending demise, still attracts massive audiences with marquee fights giving out million-dollar purses.
Mixed martial arts came about during the end of the 20th century, defying long-held conventions of hand-to-hand combat among mainstream western audiences with a heavy dose of multifaceted reality. Once they saw that slender 170-pound Brazilian in cotton pajamas take down 250-pound beefcakes and make them quit or put them to sleep, everybody wanted their share of that mojo.
It also helps that instead of a ring, they fought in a cage. That helped create the feel and aesthetic that manifested what was then known as Ultimate Fighting, then later as No-Holds-Barred Fighting or NHB, and finally Mixed Martial Arts or MMA. It was novel, dangerous, and undeniably raw — as well as an infomercial for Gracie Jiu Jitsu.
Meanwhile, there’s something about kickboxing that both impresses and perplexes casual fight fans, sometimes both for some reason. It seems to reside in that uncanny valley between traditional martial arts (that were debunked by UFC) and the aesthetics of boxing — two guys in shorts and boxing gloves duking it out in a ring with a referee in between them.
As the late, great comedian Norm Macdonald described ‘the odd sport of kickboxing’, “They combined the style and grace of boxing with uh… KICKING!”
Transition from Above-the-Waist Kicking to Whole-Body Kicking
This was certainly the case with American kickboxing — wherein you’re only allowed to kick the body and head. Not being able to kick or sweep the legs — the latter of which may be seen as dirty, as any fan of Karate Kid would know — means you have to be tricky with your kicks since you have fewer targets to hit and fewer ways to set things up.
It now seems like an anomaly in this day and age, but that was the norm in the west before Muay Thai with its leg kicks became common knowledge. During a time when kicking the legs was seen as both senseless and low skill, kicking above the waist was what everyone trained for.
Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Benny “The Jet” Urquidez, and Rick Roufus are some of the names I can recall off the top of my head from American kickboxing, which had some really good fights that you can watch if you’re willing to dig for them.
That last name was perhaps the first to taste the effectiveness of leg kicks in the west in front of a big audience. While his little Duke brother would then talk trash about the seemingly simple and easy strike, he himself became a student of Muay Thai and incorporated the leg kick into his own arsenal.
Everyone had to learn the leg kick, even its most stubborn detractors.
Here we see a separation in kickboxing — American kickboxing based on sport karate and the emerging style based on Muay Thai. The cool thing about kickboxing is that its history follows the trajectory of mainstream martial arts consciousness. From only kicking the head and body to realizing that you can kick the legs, that led to big events like the K-1 World Grand Prix and the emergence of the UFC and mixed martial arts at the end of the 20th century.
The more we know about the possibilities in physical violence, the more we’re able to understand ourselves as a civilization. I know that may get a lot of raised eyebrows, but that’s my genuine opinion.
As long as it’s not the PKA ruleset with the mandatory eight kicks per round, we should be gucci. When the fighters could throw eight kicks haphazardly during the start of the round, then brawl for the rest of it, you should know your ruleset is utter crap. UFC president Dana White continues to insist that PKA was the reason why western audiences continue to get weirded out by kickboxing, even if MMA also has kickboxing throwdowns in its contests.
I’ve fought once under PKA rules before. I can personally confirm that it’s pretty dumb. Meanwhile, PKA itself has been rebranding. Good luck to that.
The Ongoing Dilemma of Kickboxing
You’d think kickboxing would achieve mainstream success. After all, it’s the best parts of mixed martial arts without the boring grappling and ground game that put inebriated meatheads to sleep. If they like the firefights so much, then why isn’t kickboxing more popular?
Kickboxing is popular in Europe and continuing to grow in Asia, but still needs more juice in the Americas and other regions.
Perhaps it’s the history of being a landing point for practitioners of traditional martial arts.
“Why would I ever watch a bunch of karate dorks?”
Could it be the myriad of different rulesets that confuse and befuddle audiences?
“Wait, why is that illegal? Isn’t this Muay Thai? Is it American kickboxing? What the hell?”
Maybe it’s the unknown Asian or European with the personality of cardboard holding the title belt of X promotion that barely anyone outside of the region knows about.
“Is he Dutch or German or Russian or Romanian or… I don’t know anymore…”
Mind you, I don’t buy the ‘foreign name’ argument. If they can learn Giannis Antetokounmpo’s name, even the most dyslexic of casuals can learn even Thai and Georgian names.
Or it may be all the barely known promotions and organizing bodies out there, seemingly numbering by the hundreds, each with their own championship titles.
“Oh wow, that’s Victor Victorovic, 36x world champion in WBC Muay Thai, WMC, PKA, WKA, Glory, Superkombat, Lion Fight, Kunlun Fight, K-1, RISE, It’s Showtime…”
There’s also the referee. All those resets, clinch break-ups, and other regular interventions that mess up the pace of the fight. Then again, it could also be them being too negligent when it comes to breaking up clinching, which also slows down the fight. If it’s Muay Thai, it’s somewhat understandable, but that also didn’t garner mainstream audiences until recently.
Maybe I’m just inventing reasons for why kickboxing isn’t as big as it should. If the Saudis could promote Anthony Joshua vs. Francis Ngannou and Tyson Fury vs. Oleksandr Usyk to the moon with their excess oil money, why couldn’t they do the same with kickboxing?
Simply because kickboxing isn’t as big. Thus, the dilemma.
Conclusion
Linux has Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, Pop_OS!, Linux Mint, Slackware, Red Hat, Gentoo, Arch, and so many more. Each one has its own character and even personality, along with its userbase with their own quirks and eccentricities.
Kickboxing has had K-1, Glory, It’s Showtime, Lion Fight, Kunlun Fight, ONE Championship, Bellator, Superkombat, and so on. MMA is somewhat similar, but at least that has less overearching rulesets. Meanwhile, kickboxing has so many variations that it might as well be omelette recipes. Perhaps its worse since you don’t know which promotion represents the true standard, while a simple French omelette can be seen as a standard recipe.
I’m still not sure if this analogy works for describing why kickboxing has continued to frustratingly unable to connect with mainstream audiences.
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