I competed in my first karate tournament in 1981. I was a white belt in the beginner’s division, and I drew a yellow belt for my very first fight. Only later did I learn he’d been a boxer before taking up karate! He might have been a beginner in rank, but he was no beginner in fighting. I lost pretty quickly. My teacher’s only comment afterward was, “Keep training.”
And I did keep training… obviously. I fought in many tournaments after that day. Over the years I experienced both point fighting and Kyokushin knockdown fighting. Two completely different sports that take very different approaches.
Point fighting is a ruleset. One that stresses speed and control. Certainly these are good skills to develop, but here’s the problem. Yes it’s a competition, and yes it has its own challenges… but, at least for me, it always felt like something was missing. Most people who have only done knockdown understandably judge point fighting by knockdown standards and will understand that. The mistake, I think, would be assuming the training culture behind it is the same everywhere.
I say that because I don’t want to sound like I’m saying that point fighters can’t fight. Saying “point fighters can’t fight” is as misguided as saying “Kyokushin doesn’t punch to the face.” Of course they can. Of course they do. But, knockdown and point fighting are rulesets. Not real life. The real question isn’t how someone fights in a tournament. The real question is: How do they train in the dojo? Does the dojo only allow light contact in accordance with tournament rules? Or do they allow moderate to heavy contact as is often the case in Kyokushin?
To be honest, nowadays I don’t bother with point fighting at all. I teach knockdown and self-defense. I competed in point because it offered many opportunities to fight. There will always be value in a competition by placing yourself in a stressful situation where you are forced to perform. Value that, believe it or not, can help you be a better knockdown fighter. Likely some will disagree with me, but my experience both personally, and as a teacher, has been that creating stress helps teach your body to handle stress.
Having said that, nowadays, when travel costs have increased, I must make a decision on how to spend that money. The choices boil down to fight in local tournaments, more opportunity and less money individually. Or travel less but spend more to travel to high quality tournaments that have semi-contact and knockdown divisions. I’ve come to the conclusion that my time is better spent on preparing students for real life.
In my opinion, Knockdown and Sem-Contact do a better job at that. As a result rather than compete locally, there are a select few tournaments that we support. The tournaments my dojo supports each year fall into two groups.
First are the USA-IFK tournaments, which form the backbone of our event calendar:
• American International Karate Championships — now in its 33rd year
• United States International Kyokushin Championships — entering its 8th year
• AVK Kyokushin Championships — entering its 3rd year
These are the events in our organization, and naturally they are the ones we prioritize.
My dojo also supports one non-IFK event: the American Full-Contact Championship, a Shinkyokushin tournament that has traditionally been held every August. As of now their 2026 announcement is not yet posted, but I expect they will continue as they have every year.
One thing I believe in, is supporting good full-contact tournaments no matter the organization. Ultimately, the fighters benefit, and that’s what matters.
Historically, Kyokushin’s foundations were built on what would work in a real fight. In the old days, grabbing, throwing, sweeps, almost everything, was available in sparring, along with punching, kicking, elbows, and knees. I came up in a dojo that would put on their gloves and foot pads or shin and instep, and go at it. As I stated earlier, I believe that most Kyokushin dojo train with more contact than the average school. That translates into a stronger base for real-world self-defense.
As an aside, many of you may remember the last Olympics, when a competitor was knocked out and still won the gold medal. Most Kyokushin karateka shook their heads at that result. In knockdown, a knockout means you won. How could this be? Whether we agree or not, the answer is simple… that’s the ruleset. Perhaps the reasons many Kyokushin practitioners feel no strong pull toward the Olympics is that it would require too many compromises.
I’ve always said the biggest difference between Kyokushin and many other styles isn’t technique, but it’s approach to training. What historically set Kyokushin apart is its training culture. One that is based in practicality and real-world application. I believe most Kyokushin dojos still maintain that standard.
Over the years I’ve competed in many tournaments. That first tournament I mentioned earlier was just a few months after I started training. I earned my shodan in 1986 and continued to compete. The days got a lot longer though. I would often show up, compete in black belt kata, work rings all day, and then fight at the end of the day.
Working as an official is an education in itself. It sharpens your attention to detail, improves your ability to analyze movement, and deepens your understanding of technique and strategy. Teaching offers a similar kind of growth. When we teach, we’re forced to examine the art more carefully, to understand not only how something works but why. Officiating brings that same insight from a different perspective, revealing things you don’t always notice when you’re the one in the ring.
The rest of this piece is simply a few more reflections on things I learned from my teachers, things I learned from watching great fighters, and things I discovered along the way.
Tournament Fighting vs. Real Fighting
Competing in a sport is not the same as real-world self-defense. Strategies that “win the game” don’t always carry over to real life. This is particularly true in point fighting. Less so in knockdown. Tournaments are good for testing your technique and the ability to handle pressure and stress. However, if a student or instructor elevates competition above everything else, they can forget that martial arts are far larger than tournaments.
I’ve always told my students that tournaments should be seen as a training exercise. When you lose, you learn what you need to work on. When you win, you still learn. But, only if you’re honest enough to examine what you could have done better.
Conditioning Matters More Than You Think
One of the most common issues, especially among newer competitors, is underestimating the conditioning required to fight well. You must prepare for both contact and stamina. Knockdown and semi-contact divisions often go into a second round. You need enough conditioning that your body and your technique hold up to full-contact. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to be late in the second round and find yourself too tired to fight back!
Composure: A Lost Art
In the last few years, I’ve noticed a trend that troubles me: too many fighters show their emotions. Whatever happened to stoicism?
Never let your opponent see you’re tired, hurt, or angry.
Never let them know you are frustrated.
Always maintain composure.
Always show respect.
Save your celebration for when you’ve exited the ring and returned to your teacher and friends.
Winning, Losing, and Tournament Reality
No one fights a perfect fight. And the fighter who wins today might lose to the same opponent next month. It happens. That’s the reality of sport fighting.
Never get overconfident because you won.
Never make excuses because you lost.
Never rest on your laurels.
And never leave a match in the judges’ hands if you can avoid it.
Judges work hard to be fair and to enforce the rules, but they are human. A close match can go either way.
My teacher never listened to excuses. If you didn’t win, the answer was simple: train harder. If something prevented you from winning, then you needed to work toward being so good that nothing could prevent you from winning. An impossible task when you think about it. No one ever gets so good that they can’t be beat. Ask the World Champions who lost their belts to someone else.
His real advice, the principle behind, “Train harder”, was that constant improvement should be our goal. In the martial arts there are different paths. On some of these paths we will find teachers, those who have walked the path before us. To paraphrase Miyamoto Musashi, we all have the “top of the mountain” as our goal. The goal of becoming the best version of ourselves.
Final Thought
Tournaments are practice. They are a chance to test yourself. But real self-defense has no second place trophies.
Keep training.
Keep learning.
Keep your perspective.
Osu!
What about you?
If you’ve had your own experiences with tournament fighting — point or knockdown — feel free to share your thoughts below. I always enjoy hearing other perspectives. Osu!
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