PKA KICKBOXING, NOW PKA WORLDWIDE: THE BEGINNING

When soldiers returned to America (and to a number of other countries around the world) from Japan, Okinawa and China after World War II, and from Korea after the Korean War, the Asian Martial Arts began to take root in the West.

 Grand Master Robert A. Trias, USKA

Stances still looked much like the Shotokahan / JKA stances and the reverse punches very much looked the same. The back fists thrown by the Americans were very fast, and were very close to what the boxers’ jabs – just approaching the target from a slightly different angle than the boxers (and sometime later, we would see Muhammad Ali throwing a partial back first as one of his “jab-like” Friends Bruce techniques).

Most tournaments called “half-points” in the 70’s just as the early Japanese karate and Judo tournaments had done. As Joe Corley observed in the first Henry Cho’s All-American (taekwondo) Championship “I fought in at Madison Square Garden in 1969, and they were still awarding half points at this Korean sanctioned tournament. In fact, it was still being called Korean Karate in those days.”

Underneath the surface of it all, a new American influence was beginning to take place, as it had in boxing. If you go back and watch the amateur boxing from that era you will see that Europeans and other fighters from around the world had a very stiff, almost monotonous, fighting stance, but the Americans, like Cassius Clay who became known later as Muhammad Ali and other American boxers began showing their own personal styles. Their hands were held in different places, the head movement changed, the footwork changed, feints began to appear, and Western Boxing took on an entirely different look.

 The same thing started happening in the American Karate circles, and in 1972 Joe Corley and several others began calling what they were teaching American Karate.

Many traditionalists were incensed at that nomenclature, but in fact Americans were beginning to combine what they had learned in boxing with what they were doing with their kicks.

As Joe Corley said at the time, “It really is not Karate and it really is not Tang Soo Do or Tae Kwon Do any more–the way we are teaching it–and what better to call it than “American Karate“.

Karate was still punching and kicking, but the kind of punches – – where they started from and where they returned to – – changed. The punches in American Karate were starting up at jaw level, and returning to jaw level, not starting at the waist and returning to the waist. The punches had, in fact, become boxing style punches. To further the point, the punches delivered from front stances changed and punches began to be thrown with a pivoting motion just like in western style boxing. That was happening in the karate circles before the concept of “KICKBOXING” began to be introduced.

So where did “KICKBOXING” come from?

The simple description is that it was ‘boxing with kicking” or “kicking with boxing”, and that it was KICKBOXING. This was going on in the late 60’s and in a few fights. In the very early 70’s, Joe Lewis faced Greg Baines in Los Angeles, Ronnie Barkoot (RIP) in New York and Big Ed Daniels in Texas.

These were one-off, unique events and were something of a side interest of Joe Lewis. In this same time frame, the fighting style of Bando was introduced here by the venerable Dr. Maung Gyi. It was demonstrated by the Bando team of Bob Maxwell and Dr. Gyi and those bouts were attracting interest, and in the summer of 1974 at Bob Maxwell’s spectacular event in Ocean City Maryland, Harvey Hastings and Jack Dutcher would square off in the ring, with a victory for Harvey Hastings (RIP). Just a few months later, formal kickboxing would be born and at least – for that time – would be called ”full contact karate“.

Meanwhile, the top Point Fighters were still doing their techniques in the karate tournaments from Karate stances, but the foot movement was becoming more fluid; they were still being judged as always, on a point system. But something was still bubbling beneath the surface. Americanization was bubbling.

One of the bits of wisdom that Joe Corley picked up from his mentor Pat Johnson, with Chuck Norris, was that their system–the Norris system–represented what was good about martial arts in America. The Korean stylists were willing and anxious to learn from the Japanese stylists who are also anxious to learn from the Koreans. Everyone wanted to learn from the Okinawans and the Chinese wanted to share their information and Americans wanted to learn that information, but it seemed it could happen only in America.

GM Pat Johnson mentored Joe Corley as Corley’s Big Brother in Martial Arts

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

And now…it is 1974……September 14, and Joe Lewis and Mike Anderson have arranged for an ABC Broadcast, under the guidance of Tom Tannenbaum, of the First World Full Contact Karate Championship—punching and kicking full power, wearing foam gear on the hands and feet….going for the knockout.

Each semifinal bout is 3 rounds, as is each of the Championship Rounds, and here Joe Lewis, Jeff Smith, Bill Wallace and Isaias Duenas emerge as World Champs.

Just prior to this event, Mike Anderson met with and later partnered with a husband and wife team in Los Angeles, who were also parents of children who were taking lessons at Chuck Norris’ studio and who had some experience in the film and TV industry.

This team incorporated the name Professional Karate Association there in California, and it was the three of them, Mike Anderson and the husband and wife team, that set out to promote the sport further on television. Joe Corley, a world-rated Middleweight fighter at the time, who had undergone a spinal fusion in December 1973, was invited as a judge at this very first world championship. In June, ’74, Corley had returned to training and was just getting back in the ring with the guidance of his coach Asa Gordon. Corley decided while watching the full-contact fights that night in Los Angeles that he would challenge Bill Wallace for his middleweight title, and he proposed to do it at the 1975 BATTLE OF ATLANTA, Battle of Atlanta VI, 8 months later. Corley would spend that full 8 months getting his body into condition to go 9 rounds against Bill “Superfoot” Wallace.

Some 12,000 people saw that first fight, live, ringside with Corley and Wallace. Superfoot won this first ever nine round fight against Corley. Interestingly enough, Corley would be invited to become the voice of kickboxing for CBS Sports, its color commentator for Bill Wallace’s fights starting in 1977 through his retirement in 1980, live on CBS Sports. The two have become great friends over the years, partnering on many different projects together. This first title defense lives as one of the more iconic events in the sport.

In 1975, a few months after he unsuccessfully challenged Bill Wallace, Joe Corley started the World Professional Karate Commission (WPKC), strictly because none of the established martial artists’ were able to create a WIN-WIN in the sport with this husband and wife team that had incorporated PKA in California with Mike Anderson.

This team and Mike Anderson ran the PKA alone together until mid 1976 and several world championships were held on CBS Sports spectacular, featuring Bill Wallace and Benny Urquidez as the main event fighters.

During those 1975–1977 years, with PKA and WPKC operating as separate entities, Jeff Smith fought Jim Butin in Washington DC; he then fought Kariem Allah in the semi-main event of the Thrilla in Manila in October 1975 as 50 million fans looked on. Smith then successfully defended his title against Canadian Wally Slocki at the spring 1976 Battle of Atlanta in spring 1976 with Bob Wall, Olympian Bill Toomey and comedian Freddie Prinze (RIP) as commentators.

(Mike Anderson then sold the husband-wife team the PKA for $1, “out of sheer exasperation”, he said, and Anderson then joined his friend George Bruckner to start WAKO in Berlin. It was their amateur organization).

In March, 1977, Jerry Rhome had his epic fight with Ross Scott on Ted Turner‘s new cable network. It was that fight that Corley had reviewed with CBS Sports when they asked him to become their voice for PKA KICKBOXING. Although Corley asserted to them that the family team would not allow it, CBS insisted on it.

So it was in April 1977 that CBS Sports placed Joe Corley at ringside to cover the fights of Benny Urquidez versus Howard Jackson, Bill Wallace versus Blinky Rodrigues and Ross Scott versus Everett Eddy. It was there that the PKA husband and wife team suggested to Corley that they join forces “for the sake of the sport“.

Because of the CBS contract, which was represented through IMG – INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT GROUP (IMG–Corley agreed to their offer and a contract was drafted). (It was a Godwink that IMG would be the same company that in 2016 engineered the sale of UFC for a $4.025 billion – the largest ever acquisition in the sports industry – telling Corley he really had not been crazy all those years proclaiming that martial arts could equal the size of any major sport – and he still believes that about PKA WORLDWIDE occupying its own unique space today) so when 1977 (not 1077) Corley was to be 1/3 partner with 50% voting rights in PKA and it was that agreement (drafted by what is now the largest law firm in the world), and because of the organizational skills and hard work of Joe Corley and a host of other great, like-minded leaders in the martial arts working together for years and years that PKA began to take shape as a real sports entity.

Corley and the other promoters had created what would later be known as the PKA rules. Under these rules, the fights were held in a boxing ring, the rounds were two minutes with one minute rest. And the rounds were scored as in boxing. Each fighter had to throw 8 powerful kicks per round, holding was not allowed and heavily penalized and “even” rounds would be decided by who delivered the most EFFECTIVE kicks.

With PKA, Joe Corley then helped assemble and organize all the different committees for rules, ranking, ethics, sanctioning and more, calling on his relationships with the top athletes, promoters and competent martial artists from around the world.

Corley was then asked to be the commentator for NBC Sports in addition to CBS.

And then in 1979, PKA entered into a long-term agreement with ESPN, where Corley again did commentary for the PKA ESPN bouts.

During all this time, the fighters were becoming more and more electric, adding great boxing skills to their incredible kicking skills, and the original champions, Jeff Smith and Bill Wallace continued to fight and impress everyone around the world, as Joe Lewis took a little break from the ring for a film career.

The PKA would do 44 ESPN events in 1979 along with CBS and NBC events, then 40 ESPN events in 1980, another 40 in 1981 and then began to do 30 events each year, again complemented by events on NBC, CBS, USA network and several other networks.

The list of incredible world-class athletes, World Champions and challengers from around the globe grew exponentially. The fighting, promotional and organizational pool was deep and wide, and these fighters have ended up in our PKA Greatest Fighters of All Time Library:

A big part of the PKA successes came on airplanes where Joe Corley and PKA‘s main referee, Jay T Will, would discuss everything that had happened at the events and continued to revise the fighting rules, the scoring and the entire culture around what would ultimately become PKA WORLDWIDE.

As always, PKA could not be everything to everyone, and a rival organization, WKA, appeared in 1977. This organization insisted on having leg kicks, and its competition in the early days was primarily held in Japan, where its bouts were generally considered modified Muay Thai bouts, quite dissimilar to the PKA BOUTS.

Their best champion was originally former PKA champ Benny that would be BENNY “the Jet“, later joined by former PKA contender and US champion Don Wilson(both of whom had been promoted widely by PKA on CBS and ESPN), Peter Cunningham, and several others, mostly from the West Coast, who were competing in these WKA events.

Joe Corley would often say internally that he wished that Benny Urquidez and Don Wilson had been able to continue fighting in PKA. In many meetings suggested by the world’s largest sports marketing company, IMG (that brought $4.025 billion for the UFC sale), Corley and the WKA leader met, but the WKA leader would have none of the synergy suggested by Barry Frank and Corley.

Other groups would be formed in various places, more world champions would be crowned than even boxing had coronated, and the sport would continue to have influence in various areas.

All the while, the PKA Champions were always the best known. Joe Corley‘s primary role then, from 1977 through 1986 was to coordinate, broadcast and develop public relations around the best fights in the world and the greatest kickboxing fighters in the world. Over these years, Joe Corley produced with ESPN, CBS and NBC some 1,000 hours of programming, and many great names were developed along the way. We had great fights on the networks and ESPN with great ratings on all of them, and in those days, boxing’s top promoters did all they could to slow the growth of the sport.

During all those years, the PKA did not have a major financial partner, and in the end, that would be the temporary undoing of the PKA. As is true in so much of the martial arts, too many people want to be in charge and are unwilling to participate in the long-range view.

And so it was in 1986 that Joe Corley and his partners in the PKA would part ways.

At the same time, there were some promoters that Joe Corley had brought into the PKA and had trained and worked very closely with and whose events he had scheduled for broadcast in the PKA who decided to separate and form the ISKA. These people decided to compete with the PKA sponsors Joe Corley had signed and compete for television contracts. Years later, Corley and these “separatists” are friends again, for the most part, and he worked with them in short term ways when he thought it could be win-win.

But as in the splintering off of the WKA, there were too many chiefs and not enough braves at the time, and everyone thought they were the brilliant leaders and saviors. Again, martial artists were not working together, and there was no financial partner to dictate who should do what. As history moved on, other organizations would arise and would primarily work in regional areas.

Joe Corley worked with his friend Glenn Keeney continuing to build a sport around the Professional Karate
Commission (PKC) and worked with Grand Master Keeney and Don Willis in promoting big PKA events on Showtime from 1991 through 1994. From KARATEMANIA I in April 1986 Featuring Jean Yves Theriault vs Bob Thunder Thurman and Jerry Rhome vs Bad Brad Hefton and Jerry Golden Boy Trimble vs Leroy Taylor on ESPN through KARATEMANIA VIII in 1994 on SHOWTIME and Pay Per View, featuring Jean Yves Theriault vs Rick Roufus, Dennis Alexio vs Dick Kimber and Paul Vizzio vs Juan Torres, PKA aggressively promoted the top names in the sport in the biggest broadcasts in the history of the sport.

KARATEMANIA I: 1986 at BATTLE OF ATLANTA XVII

Joe Corley’s Battle of Atlanta was home to Karatemania I, II and IV, presenting the Greatest Fighters of All Time.

The larger sports world gets to see the skills of the incredible Rick “the Jet” Roufus who had asked Joe Corley at age 10 to help him become World Champ; he won that first title the following year. Here he KO’s
Tony Smith.

KARATEMANIA II: 1987 at BATTLE OF ATLANTA XVII

KARATEMANIA III: 1990 AT CAESARS TAHOE CASINO

KARATEMANIA IV: 1991 AT BATTLE OF ATLANTA XXII

KARATEMANIA V: 1991 IN MONTREAL

KARATEMANIA VI: 1993 AT CAESARS TAHOE CASINO

Mike Thunderkick McDonald, WKA North American Champ, Challenges Rick the Jet Roufus for the PKA Light Heavy crown. Roufus KO’s McDonald in 1st Round. McDonald goes on later to win the K-1.

KARATEMANIA VII: 1993 IN MONTREAL

Australia’s Tasis Petridis travels to Montreal to be Jean Yves Theriault’s final challenge before squaring off against Rick the Jet Roufus in PKA KARATEMANIA VIII. Petridis has a great night and has just the wrong style for the Iceman and while they punched and kicked each other non-stop, Petridis leaves Montreal with a split decision victory over Theriault.

KARATEMANIA VIII: 1994 IN MONTREAL

Rick Roufus vs Jean Yves Theriault was building for 8 years from 1986 – 1994…also on the card DENNIS ALEXIO defends his heavyweight crown against DICK KIMBER and PAUL VIZZIO meets JUAN TORRES for the lightweight crown.

2009 – 2024

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