As with most martial arts, the roots of Kickboxing date back over 2000 years to Asia but though there are many similarities to MuayThai, modern Kickboxing evolved from full contact karate.
During the mid-seventies various American tournament karate practitioners became frustrated with the limitations of the primitive competitive scoring system. They wanted to find a system within which they could apply kicks and punches to knockout.

Early Full contact karate bouts were fought on open matted areas just as ordinary karate matches were. Later events were staged in regular size boxing rings. These early tournaments produced kickboxing's first stars, Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace, Benny Urquidez and Jeff Smith.

When full contact karate first began as a sport in the US in the early seventies, the fighters of that time had to learn through a process of trial and error. The fighters all came from ranks of traditional karate or other traditional martial arts, and when they fought in professional full contact bouts certain shortcomings and defects became apparent. They discovered that they were not as fit or conditioned as they had thought and they struggled to fight 10 rounds in the professional ring. The full contact fighters also discovered to their dismay that their punches were not as effective in the ring as they had expected. This was partially due to the fact that in many of traditional martial arts schools contact sparring with use of gloves is very rare and students are taught to pull back their punches and kicks. In order to develop kickboxing and to improve the sport, kick boxers turned to the training, conditioning and fighting techniques of western professional boxing. Boxers sparred for countless rounds in preparation for their bouts. Their sparring was virtually full contact and they took hundreds of punches to the body and the head during sparring. This toughened, conditioned and tempered their bodies and strengthened their minds and will. They became mentally and physically prepared to do battle every time they entered the ring. They also developed their punching power by hitting the heavy bag and the jab pads every day.

The pioneer full contact karate fighters therefore went to the boxing gyms and learned all the secrets of the fight game, sparring with boxers and being trained under boxing trainers. Boxing training techniques and strategies were therefore incorporated into and adopted by the sport of kickboxing. Kick boxers began to improve tremendously and their techniques became more powerful as they became much fitter and better conditioned than ever before. The kickboxing bouts became more action packed and exciting. The dynamic modern version of kickboxing had arrived on the international sport circuit and was expanding and spreading all over the world.

Kickboxing was officially born in Los Angeles in September 1974 when Anderson, together with Don and Judy Quine, formed the first world sanctioning body for the new sport and named it the PKA. They promoted the first full contact World Professional Karate Championships. This was the beginning of modern kickboxing and by the late Twentieth century the sport Kickboxing was starting to take its own original form.

Joe Lewis, the first Professional Karate Association PKA World Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion, was a pioneer of full contact karate and fought in the prototype full contact bout in Long Beach, CA in Jan 1970. It was Lewis who contacted karate innovator Mike Anderson with a view to organizing and promoting the new sport of full contact karate.

George Bruckner from Germany, who was a close friend of Mike Anderson, pioneered full contact karate in Europe. In 1975 Bruckner together with other European martial artists formed the World All Style Karate Organization WAKO. First European Kickboxing Championships were promoted by Bruckner in 1976 in Germany. Full contact karate, or kickboxing, was by this time spreading globally and had become an international sport. 

In USA a number of other kickboxing sanctioning bodies came into being, namely WKA (World Karate Association) , ISKA (International Sport Karate Association), KICK (Karate International Council of Kickboxing), PKC (Professional Karate Commission) and WAKO-Pro (World Association of Kickboxing Organizations - Professional).The WKF (World Kickboxing Federation) was established in London in 1987. With the formation of these sanctioning bodies, promoters in the USA and elsewhere began to promote world title fights as well as international kickboxing bouts. Kickboxing had started to gain in popularity all over the world, to the point where it had become both an internationally recognized sport and martial arts discipline.

Later the Americans really wanted to test their mettle and sent teams of kick boxers to Japan under the banner of the WKA (World Kickboxing Association). From this point kickboxing developed in to a true international sport.