Texas Branch - Enshinkaikan

Sensei Andrew Budd, Texas Branch Chief

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Kancho Joko Ninomiya

Sabaki Challenge

Sensei Andrew Budd

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The year after Kancho Ninomiya won the All-Japan tournament, 1979, he started a full-contact tournament of his own in Denver, Colorado.  The first few tournaments were held in a high school gymnasium in front of a few hundred spectators.

Over the years Ninomiya’s tournament grew into the Sabaki Challenge, which has become the standard for full-contact karate in the United States.  Considered karate’s purest test of fighting skills, the Sabaki Challenge has drawn a “live gate” of over 7500 and millions in television audiences through the United States and abroad. 

Recognized internationally as an event that embraces the spirit and discipline of the budo tradition, the Sabaki Challenge provides serious martial artists of all styles the toughest and fairest test of karate skills. 

“Joko Ninomiya is no stranger to hard knocks.  A former chieftain in Masatatsu Oyama’s kyokushinkai karate, Ninomiya stood out in bare knuckle, full contact competition in his native Japan.  His years of training and excellence in kyokushinkai led him to create his own system of Enshin karate, which is based on the “useful redirection of force” and potent sweeps, throws and strikes. 

Upon arriving in the United States in 1974, Ninomiya set out to spread his art.  He created the Sabaki Challenge in 1979, a year after he won the All-Japan Tournament.  His Denver, Colorado based event has set the standard for bare-knuckle, full-contact competition in the United States.”

-Black Belt Magazine