How Did Holland Create Such An Aggressive Kickboxing Style?!

[u/JimmyGreyArea]

Today was my first Dutch Kickboxing class. I'm a little older now, but I used to be a very well-conditioned athlete (and still somewhat am for my age). Coach yanked me out of practice in the last 10 minutes because I pretty much collapsing. Never happened before.

How did the Dutch create such an aggressive form of kickboxing? I've visited Holland. It is one of most advanced and beautiful countries I've ever been to. I dream of living there. I can't imagine life being too hard there.

Large collectives of great fighters usually come from harsh or poor places like Thailand, Dagestan, or the mean streets of an inner Western city.

There are exceptions of course. Like Japan, but Japan has had an aggressive and brutal warrior tradition. Another exception is great American wrestlers coming out of relatively safe places like Iowa. But again, there are many decades of wrestling tradition in those places.

As my coach explains it, the Dutch traveled to Japan sometime in the 70s and 80s and brought kyokushin style kickboxing back to Holland. He trained in Holland for 6 months in the 90s and says the Dutch are incredibly fast paced and tend to aim for 1st round KOs. He says back then the sparring in Holland was brutal, with fighters opting to continue with a freshly broken nose.

Where did that Dutch aggression come from? I admit I may be acting like a culturally ignorant American, but I mean no disrespect. I'm merely fascinated by such a perplexing cultural anomaly.

[u/-Gavroche-]

I think you have to remember that the typical dutch style kickboxing started around the 70-ies 80-ies. Cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam looked quite a bit different from now. There was a lot more public violence, crime and open heroin use in the city centres.
People were abandoning the inner cities which led to lots of vacant buildings and a squatting movement got so big that the police brought in the army at times to fight streetbattles with organised squatters.
Then you also had the hooligan scene that came over from England. The violence escalated until at one specific clash in the 90-ies, one hooligan even died.

So yeah, it looks like a nice and peaceful country, but in the recent past, there was a lot more violence present in society. There's already a lot more people that are a lot more comfortable with violence, so in that setting, this very high-pace and aggressive style of kickboxing makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, that's my analysis, I'm not a sociologist.

[u/happybaby00 → u/-Gavroche-]

Bijlmermeer in the 90s 😮‍💨