The Greatest Karate and Taekwondo Fighters of All Time

A short history of Karate & Taekwondo

Karate developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom, today's Okinawa, from local fighting methods shaped by Chinese martial arts. It was taught in Okinawan schools from 1905, and in 1922 Gichin Funakoshi, the founder of Shotokan, introduced it to mainland Japan, borrowing judo's training uniform, coloured belts and ranks. At a meeting in Naha on 25 October 1936, Okinawan masters formally adopted the name karate in the sense of "empty hand".

Sport karate then divided along rule sets. Mas Oyama founded Kyokushin in 1964 around full-contact knockdown fighting, while the World Union of Karate-do Organizations, today's World Karate Federation, was formed in 1970 and held the first world championships in Tokyo that year. Women joined the world championships in 1980, and in 1999 the IOC recognized the WKF as karate's governing body. Karate made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games, held at the Nippon Budokan in August 2021, but it was left off the 2024 and 2028 programs.

Taekwondo emerged in Korea after 1945, when new schools called kwans opened in Seoul, led by teachers with backgrounds in Japanese and Chinese martial arts; karate was the main influence. Army officer Choi Hong-hi founded the International Taekwon-Do Federation in 1966; after South Korea withdrew its support in 1972, the ITF was headquartered in Toronto. South Korea established the Kukkiwon as its national academy in 1972, and the World Taekwondo Federation was founded there in 1973, holding its first world championships in Seoul that year.

Olympic-style taekwondo was a demonstration sport at Seoul in 1988 and Barcelona in 1992 and became a full medal sport at Sydney in 2000. The federation renamed itself World Taekwondo in 2017, and major tournaments now score kicks with electronic body protectors, head guards and foot sensors, awarding extra points for kicks to the head and spinning techniques.

• ✦WKF karate: punches score one point, body kicks two, and head kicks or techniques on a downed opponent three.
• ✦A WKF bout ends at an eight-point lead or after three minutes; a tie goes to the first scorer, otherwise the judges decide.
• ✦Kyokushin knockdown karate is full contact but bans punches and elbow strikes to the head and neck.
• ✦World Taekwondo bouts are three two-minute rounds, with electronic sensors registering kicks to the trunk protector and headgear.
• ✦Taekwondo awards extra points for head kicks and spinning kicks; punches to the head are illegal.
• ✦Each taekwondo penalty (gam-jeom) gives the opponent a point, and 10 penalties mean defeat.