[Razor Bump]

Jet had an awesome record..... The Dragon had like 40 something bouts without a defeat and that lasted for a long time. I cant remember the young guy that beat him.

[Kid McCoy]

They were two of the best, most well known “American style” Kickboxing champions in history, but I’d have difficulty choosing one very far above the other.
Both were unusual in that, like Chuck Norris, Joe Lewis and Bill Wallace before them, they were able to parlay their ring success into minor celebrity, acting in movies and making a good living on the seminar circuit.

Benny had been a martial arts practitioner since childhood, and began His career in 1973 as a member of Ed Parker’s “Los Angeles stars” performance troupe.
As pointed out in a post above, Wilson always seemed to be a little more down to earth about his human limitations, while Benny, conversely, seemed to gravitate toward the “invincible” myth that too often prevails in the Martial Arts community, stating (or allowing to be stated) in his biography, hyperbole such as “By 1977 he had already won the WKA and PKA world championships, and traveled to Japan to systematically defeat every champion they had to offer, compiling a championship record of 63-0 with 57 Knockouts… He remained undefeated for 27 consecutive years and remains the longest reigning world champion in all professional sports”.

Now that all sounds pretty darned impressive, if Benny do say so himself. Count Dante, George Dillman and other Chi-ball throwers have nothing on him, it seems.

Benny, of course, had lost to Nakmuay Thaimak Prayoud Sittiboonlert of Thailand while in Japan in a fight that was ruled a no-contest, and there are competing stories about what actually happened, and whether or not “The Jet” was blindsided about the use of Full Muay Thai rules before the fight.
What is well known is that Sittiboonlert beat Benny convincingly with knees in the clinch, under full Muay Thai rules, and that his corner threw in the towel after two completed rounds. Later, the WKA, at least for their own accounting purposes, ruled the fight a "no-contest", leading many to speculate that they were simply trying to maintain the ‘undefeated record’ of their champion. (Don King after the Buster Douglas fight comes to mind). But while Tyson graciously accepted his performance, to this day Urquidez has not acknowledged the defeat.

Wilson had his first professional match in 1974. His first major title came in the form of the WKA Light-Heavyweight championship in 1980, and on the way to a 69-5-2, with 46 KO’s record he would also pick up the PKO, STAR, WKC and KICK Light-Heavyweight World titles, the WKA & STAR Cruiserweight World titles, the WKA & STAR “Super Light-Heavyweight” World titles, as well as the ISKA Cruiserweight World Championship.

Memorable fights are found on his record against prominent contemporaries such as Greg Smith, Mark Zatarotos, James Warring, Demetrius ‘Oaktree” Edwards, James Sisco, Maurice Smith, Dennis Alexio, Willie Ruffin, Steve Mackey, Attapong Buadan, “Iceman” Jean-Yves Theriault, Marek Piotrowski, Branko Cikatic, Dick Kimber and later, K-1 star Dewey Cooper, who he defeated in 2000 in Las Vegas, when past the age of 50 !

His decision to fight in Thailand under unfamiliar rules is to his credit, and when he lost there, he himself made no excuses, other than to say that he would study Muay Thai himself, seeing how effective the style was.
Also to his credit was that he was able to beat Thais, as he did against Panya Sornnoi and Pongdienoi Prasobchai.
Wilson, then the WKA “world champion” also lost to a Thai, Samart Prasamit at the Ratchadamnoen.

This part is important:

The typical K-1 Kickboxing/Muay Thai fan in 2006 will invariably shrug off their accomplishments because they came at a pioneering time when Muay Thai was yet to be fully adopted in ring sports outside of Thailand and Burma.
It’s important to note that high-kicks, long pants “Kickboxing” was a very small sport, even at it’s peak, and that the level of available competition under those rules was scarce in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Evidently, the tradition of no “hitting below the belt” was carried forward from Boxing in the “American style” of Kickboxing.
Those are the early conditions in which Wilson and Urquidez lived and fought.

This style, or sport variant, has lost favor during the past 15 years to the more exciting, more open rules Muay Thai style, of which a variant is practiced in European and Japanese professional rings today, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, the U.S., Australia and a limited number of other places.

Nonetheless, Dragon Wilson and Benny the Jet represent the crest of the 1960-s-1980’s style that was born in Japan and found favor in the U.S., and they made their mark before Muay Thai as a sport took full root in Holland, France and later the rest of Europe, and as such, these two can be considered pioneers.

Their “kickboxing” style of ring decorum came directly from Japan initially, in the early 1960’s under the direction of Osamu Noguchi as a way of introducing a workable brand of Karate that would make Japanese practitioners more effective against Muay Thai specialists in the ring.
As Japanese ‘full-contact Karate’ fighters had failed in a number of team matches against Thai opponents, Noguchi saw the need to develop more “hands on application” elements to the hand to hand martial traditions originating from Japan, and saw this as a matter of national pride. These efforts culminated in early Japanese kickboxing legends such as Mitsuo Shima, Toshio Fujiwara, Toshiro Harukawa, and American Ray Elder.

Likewise, the American martial arts scene bowed to emerging criticism stateside in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s that the ‘mystical fighting systems’ being portrayed in avenues such as ‘Bruce Lee movies’ didn’t actually work very well without the choreography tricks used on film, and they too began to showcase the arts in real sport fights, but like the Japanese, found the need to incorporate the more fluid style and training perfected in longstanding fight sports like Boxing, after a series of mixed match disasters, as the Muay Thai fighters had done some 60 years prior during navel occupation driven cultural exchanges. The results in America drew the sport away from the formulaic forms and stances of “Full contact Karate” and toward more proficient “Kick Boxing”.


Muay Thai was familiar to small groups in the west dating back to the early to mid 1800’s, and in fact, the west influenced the sport starting around 1900 when navel boxing units fought against local talent. This cross pollination lead the way for eventual use of the ring, gloves, rounds and some stylistic polish during the teens and twenties, paving the road for the building of the first indoor Muay Thai stadiums, and the growth of the local custom into a sport.

In 1950, Muay Thai was brought to the shores of America in the form of circus exhibitions performed by fighters such as Somsri Tiemkamhaeng and Surachai Looksurin.

In terms of home grown kickboxing however, involving larger, western sized fighters, Muay Thai’s real infusion into the international practice of fight sports only got off the ground toward the middle of Wilson and Urquidez’ era, as knees, elbows, and most importantly low kicks (and checks) were employed early on in Holland by European martial artists Jan Plas, Ivan Thorne, Cor Hemmers and Tom Harinck in fights initially promoted by entrepreneurs like French singer Don Clovis, as the excitement of those contests was generally viewed as greater than high-kick kickboxing, and the effectiveness of the simple, hard style Muay Thai discipline had demonstrated over and over again in mixed matches against other Eastern originated stand-up styles in Asia, and later in Europe involving Chakuriki and Mejiro stable battlers.

As the grappling-incorporating sport of “Mixed martial Arts” continues to teach in the new millennium, adding things together makes for a better result.

Today, when people talk “Kickboxing”, they are generally talking the modern permutation of the style that has it’s origins in Thailand and Burma, and came to the west, as a practiced pro sport, only in recent years.

Even so, legends like Don Wilson and Benny Urquidez remain a part of the history of the sport we love today, and by popularizing the use of the feet in a Boxing style match, they join the Western Boxers, Eastern Martial Arts masters, Thais, Japanese and Europeans in helping to popularize fight sports the world over, and were, for their rules and for their times, among the best that ever lived.

[Yakima Canutt]

Wow, very informative Kid. Im curious, when were Plas, Hemmers, Harinck and co actually fighting? It would be very interesting to see a tape of some of those matches!

[Kid McCoy]

Originally Posted by Yakima Canutt

Wow, very informative Kid. Im curious, when were Plas, Hemmers, Harinck and co actually fighting? It would be very interesting to see a tape of some of those matches!

Trainers, mostly, wisenheimer.....maybe some gym clips, holding the pads ?

[Yakima Canutt]

I misunderstood this part:

>>most importantly low kicks (and checks) were employed early on in Holland by European martial artists Jan Plas, Ivan Thorne, Cor Hemmers and Tom Harinck in fights initially promoted by entrepreneurs like French singer Don Clovis,<<

I thought that meant that they had fought on these cards. but i havent been called a wisenheimer in a while ;)

[Kid McCoy]

Originally Posted by Yakima Canutt

I misunderstood this part:

>>most importantly low kicks (and checks) were employed early on in Holland by European martial artists Jan Plas, Ivan Thorne, Cor Hemmers and Tom Harinck in fights initially promoted by entrepreneurs like French singer Don Clovis,<<

I thought that meant that they had fought on these cards. but i havent been called a wisenheimer in a while ;)

LOL......Hey, other than that, did you like the post ?

For many posters here, all of that is academic, but for others, they just might not know how it all fits together, to, as K-1 puts it, “K-1 is a martial arts fighting sport which fuses centuries of tradition from martial arts such as karate, kung fu, tae kwon do and kickboxing (the "K") into a thoroughly modern and electrifying spectator sport, to determine the single best stand-up fighter in the world (the "1"). K-1 rules allow fighters from many different disciplines to compete, and the elaborate production values of K-1 events makes these extravaganzas a veritable feast for the senses. Since its introduction in 1993 under the direction of founder Master Kazuyoshi Ishii, K-1 has become one of the world's fastest-growing sports”.

K-1’s inclusion of “kung fu, tae kwon…” might be a little stretch in the pure sense, but it draws in the may aficionados of those arts as potential fans.

My point was to get the jump on people tempted to say something to the effect, "They both sucked....No low kicks".

To me, it's all part of the evolution of what K-1 is pulling together under broadly accepted rules, and they (Benny and Don) were a part of that evolutionary process that we call Kickboxing.
What we see today in K-1 draws from several parallel timelines (some more than others), and I tried to skim the surface of some of those.

[Kire Khar]

Originally Posted by Yakima Canutt

Wow, very informative Kid. Im curious, when were Plas, Hemmers, Harinck and co actually fighting? It would be very interesting to see a tape of some of those matches!

Don't remember anything about Plas, specifically, but I'm pretty sure I remember reading about Harnick & Hemmers having had fight careers before they became trainers.

And at least one of them was part of the first group of Dutch fighters to go into Thailand and compete with the Thais.

[deadpool]

Kid, you never cease to amaze me with your knowledge. Cut and paste or straight from the dome?

Do study/follow all fighting sports? I know you know volumes about pugilism and even MMA, but I was unaware that you followed kickboxing/Muay Thai.

Anyway, great info.

[Yakima Canutt]

[quote=Kid McCoy]LOL......Hey, other than that, did you like the post ?


I like your argument about trying to look at the evolution of "kickboxing" ( used here as an all inclusive term), about which little is known. Its history is very fragmented, and most discussions are based on a current look at "Muay Thai rules" or "TKD sucks" as if these arts
have existed totally seperately. As you point out there has certainly been a lot of cross pollination, and they have all evolved over time.
I was certainly one of those that was sceptical about K-1's motto regarding it different fighting sports, but they have shown that they really meant it, and they have shown to be a strong influence in fightsports around the world. Japan is the 2nd biggest economy in the world, and certainly the biggest market for "kickboxing"

[tycobb]

Originally Posted by AnimalMother12

Are we talking muay thai or american kickboxing? Muay thai I don't think either of those guys come close to Ramon Dekkers.

Dekkers was so ridiculous... so many fights, the guy is made of granite.