WKA History

WKA Beginnings and Early History

The martial arts are one of the most confusing sporting disciplines in the world, totally distinct from all other sporting connotations. You can only play football one way, tennis, rowing, running, gymnastics, and virtually every other sports discipline is practised to a universal conformity. Whereas the Martial arts which is a generic term generally used to cover combat forms from all over the world, is broken down into many various styles and forms of fighting. The term martial art as used today is meant to indicate fighting formats that originated in South East Asia. There are many colourful and exciting disciplines encompassed within these indigenous fighting arts.

From Japan we have Karate, jiu jitsu, judo, Aikido. From Korea there is Taekwon-do, Hapkido, Kuk-Sool –Won. From Thailand there is Muay Thai (Thai Boxing). Bando from Burma (Myan-Mar) from China there is the generic term Kung fu that encompasses at least five hundred different styles of empty hand fighting. The list is endless, and then here in the West we have the many various forms of wrestling and boxing. From France we have La Savate. It would seem that to the uninitiated there is a plethora of combat systems that would seem endless. All fighting and competing under different methods and rules systems.

The WKA TODAY
The WKA today enjoys great success at all levels on a global scale. It has representatives in more than 90 countries and regularly holds competitions, culminating once a year in a WKA World Championships involving all the amateur martial arts disciplines and styles under one set competition format. Last year (2001) with more than sixty countries present and two thousand competitors the WKA held its seventh World championships in Vienna Austria. This year (2002) the WKA’s venue for the World Championships is Italy and nearly 3,000 competitors from eighty countries are expected to attend. The success of the WKA can only be due to its organizational infrastructure and its democratic process and its safety and fairplay guidelines.

Each country within membership of the WKA has a president who is responsible for that countries implementation of the rules and regulations. And to overlook the growth and practice of the martial disciplines as a whole. The WKA has in place, a rules committee, a health and safety committee, a refereeing structure, and always each year there is an annual congress. The Congress discusses the many aspects of change within the sport, it designates via the democratic principle of votes new rules and regulations, updates and innovations within the sport as they come to light. No one person dictates what is to be done. Each member country votes upon all decisions. This is largely how the WKA has grown from the first real and oldest kickboxing sanctioning body in the world to enjoy the continuing success in this new century.

Many have tried to emulate the format and success of the WKA but all have failed due to the fact they fail to adopt the democratic process and also fail to accept that children are the sports future and therefore need to be nurtured if the sport is to grow. Part of the secret of the WKA’s growth is that it is continually moving forwards and striving to better every aspect of its infrastructure, and also examine developments within sports science and sports safety. Thus ensuring that in future years the WKA and its member countries will keep on growing from strength to strength……