The schools
Styles exist because rulesets do. The Dutch chain of hands into a low kick is the optimal answer to a code where legs are legal and the clinch is too brief to rest in. Bill Wallace’s one-legged kicking game only works where nobody may attack a lead leg. Andy Hug’s axe kick exists because Kyokushin forbids punching the head. Each school here is the shape a rulebook pressed into the people training under it.
Savate
1840French kickboxing fought in shoes, where every kick lands with the boot and the vocabulary is codified by name.
FranceJapanese Kickboxing
1966The original school — the one that named the sport — and still the deepest scene in the lighter divisions.
JapanKyokushin
1969Bare-knuckle knockdown karate — the organisational and stylistic ancestor of K-1.
JapanAmerican Kickboxing
1974Karate with boxing gloves, built above the waist — and the school most transformed by contact with the rest of the world.
United StatesDutch Kickboxing
1976The most influential school in the sport: boxing combinations that finish on a low kick, drilled to reflex.
NetherlandsSanda
1979Chinese kickboxing with throws, contested on a raised platform where pushing an opponent off scores.
China