A few years back I asked my friend John Corcoran to research and write an article about the early history of Sport Karate in America. An article describing how Americans adopted traditional Asian martial arts like Karate, Tae Kwon Do or Hap Ki Do and turned them in to a competitive fighting sport, first known as: Sport Karate. This later became known as Fullcontact fighting and kickboxing as we know it today. John, who is one of the best martial arts editors and historians I know, wrote an outstanding piece of paper about this and I am happy to have found the original English language copy to post below. This is the first of 2 parts.