Shoot Boxing
シュートボクシングA Japanese stand-up ruleset that adds throws and standing submissions to kickboxing. Founded by Caesar Takeshi in 1985; its flagship event is the S-Cup.
Quick Facts
JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Shoot Boxing
Shoot boxing is a Japanese stand-up competitive ruleset that adds to kicks, punches, knees and elbows exactly what kickboxing forbids: throws and standing submissions. A fighter may throw an opponent out of the clinch and may finish a choke, an armlock or a wristlock while both are still on their feet. What he may not do is take the fight down — once it hits the floor the referee stands the fighters back up. The discipline was created in August 1985 by the Japanese fighter Caesar Takeshi, and the first event was held on 1 September of the same year. It began as a promotion company based in Tokyo rather than as a school with belts, and its rules were written from the start to keep stand-up fighting compelling without a ground phase. Scoring rests on four categories — knockdowns, damage inflicted, clean hits and aggressiveness — graded by the judges on a scale of one to ten, with the gap between fighters in a single round capped at four points. A completed standing submission is called a "catch" and counts for as much as a hard strike. The flagship event is the S-Cup, an eight-man single-elimination tournament held roughly every two years since 1995; a Girls S-Cup has run annually since 2009. For comparison: against kickboxing it gains throws and submissions, against shoot wrestling it lacks ground fighting. Shoot boxing is therefore a stand-up discipline with grappling elements, not a lighter form of MMA.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.