History UsefulNotes / Karate

* '''Kyokushin''': the hardest style, this school embodies what people tend to believe about karate as crazy men beating down each other and breaking things. Its founder Mas Oyama ''[[BloodKnight loved]]'' to fight, so the school is strongly oriented towards sport combat and has solid ties to UsefulNotes/{{Kickboxing}} and UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts, having given birth to several offshoots dedicated to those fields, like Ashihara, Daido-juku, Seidokaikan and Shidokan. It is characterized by its full contact, knock-down style, meaning the matches are strictly scored on KO's and damage inflicted to the opponent.

* '''Goju-Ryu''': a style with strong Chinese heritage created by Chojun Miyagi. It is mainly based on the kung-fu concept of hard/soft duality, and as such it incorporates a balanced and divided moveset, drawing from the alternation between soft circular movements and hard lineal attacks at close range.

* '''Uechi-Ryu''': an Okinawan style founded by Kanbun Uechi, notable for its unique fighting stance, hardcore body conditioning, and its emphasis on toe-kicks, knuckle-strikes, and spear-hand techniques. Features just eight kata, of which only three are from Uechi's original teachings. Though akin to Goju-Ryu, this style has an even stronger Chinese heritage, owing to the founder directly learning a kung fu style whilst in Southern China; as such, though related to the Naha-te styles, Uechi-Ryu actually developed mostly independently from them.

* '''Mumonkai''': founded by Yoshimoto Togashi, who studied Kyokushin, traditional karate sparring, and bōgutsuki karate to create his own style. His style's competitions are unique as fighters can wear protective equipment such as super safe helmets, MMA gloves and shin and foot guards or none of them at all at their own risk. Allowed techniques include all striking even to the face and throws. It is a form of full contact point fighting, meaning clean hits will score points as well as stop and reset the bout throughout the time limit, but unlike normal point fighting, strikes can be thrown at full power and knockouts are a legit way to win the bout.

* '''Kyokushin Budokai''': another Kyokushin offshoot, this time founded by Dutch pioneer Jon Bluming. Also known as '''All-Round Fighting''' to avoid confusion with another organisation that uses the same name, it is a full contact bare knuckle karate style that also allows grappling, groundfighting, and submissions due to Bluming's training in Judo, but also allows palm strikes to the head and face unlike Kyokushin, which is kind of HilariousInHindsight as Bluming and his students later became involved in the [[Wrestling/UniversalWrestlingFederation shoot style wrestling movement]] that also featured this as part of their ruleset by sheer coincidence.

* ArsenalAttire: Averted, mostly with the traditional styles as despite the modern uniform being based off the judogi, most traditional styles do not include techniques that use the gi at all. The notable exceptions are the more MMA-oriented ones like Daido-juku and other Kyokushin offshoots.

* '''Horting''': a martial art developed in Ukraine by Eduard Eremenko based on Cossack fighting traditions, though he also drew from his background as a Master of Sport in Kyokushin as well as influences from kickboxing, judo, sambo and MMA. Practitioners where jackets called "hortovka" with matching long pants and belt. Competition rules have forms, self defense demonstrations, saber fencing, grappling (with and without the jacket), and two MMA rulesets; the first have fighters wear boxing gloves but everything in MMA is allowed and the other consists of 2 rounds, the first round has fighters wear MMA gloves and is basically normal MMA, if it goes to the second round however TheGlovesComeOff and fighters fight bare knuckle with strikes to the head banned.