Page "Kickboxing" Paragraph 40

Kickboxing boomed and became popular in Japan as it began to be broadcast on TV.

By 1970, kickboxing was telecast in Japan on three different channels three times weekly.

The fight cards regularly included bouts between Japanese ( kickboxers ) and Thai ( muay thai ) boxers.

Tadashi Sawamura was an especially popular early kickboxer.

In 1971 the All Japan Kickboxing Association ( AJKA ) was established and it registered approximately 700 kickboxers.

The first AJKA Commissioner was Shintaro Ishihara, the longtime Governor of Tokyo.

Champions were in each weight division from fly to middle.

Longtime kickboxer Noboru Osawa won the AJKA bantam weight title, which he held for years.

Raymond Edler, an American university student studying at Sophia University in Tokyo, took up kickboxing and won the AJKC middleweight title in 1972 ; he was the first non-Thai to be officially ranked in the sport of Thai boxing, when in 1972 Rajadamnern ranked him no.

3 in the Middleweight division.

Edler defended the All Japan title several times and abandoned it.

Other popular champions were Toshio Fujiwara and Mitsuo Shima.

Most notably, Fujiwara was the first non-Thai to win an official Thai boxing title, when he defeated his Thai opponent in 1978 at Rajadamnern Stadium winning the lightweight championship bout.