Hajime Kazumi

Your Mission: Fight 100 Opponents Consecutively And Win At Least 50%

The stand-up full contact karate style founded in 1964 by Mas Oyama is known as Kyokushin karate and practicioners are motivated to self-improvement, discipline and hard training.

In most Kyokushin organizations, hand and elbow strikes to the head or neck are prohibited. However, kicks to the head, knee strikes, punches to the upper body, and kicks to the inner and outer leg are permitted.

And this is what championship kumite Kyokushin-style looks like:

And if that weren’t tough enough Mas Oyama came up with the idea of the 100 man kumite for black belts. It really is what it claims to be.

You face 100 opponents (brown belts and up) consecutively in one 1.5 or 2 minute round each under normal Kyokushin rules and with 30 seconds rest between fights, and you are required to clearly “win”, meaning not getting knocked down in at least 50% of the fights, and never get knocked down for longer than 5 seconds.

Legendary Hajime Kazumi completed his 100 man kumite in 1999:

Time per Kumite 1 minute 30 seconds
Time Started 11:38
Time Finished 15:42
Total Fighting Time 3 hours 20 minutes 40 seconds
Total Spending Time 4 hours 4 minutes
Results 58 wins, 42 draws, no losses

The 100 man kumite was introduced in the early 60s. Naomi Woods became the first female to complete it in 2004. Originally, Mas Oyama wanted the challenge to be a requirement for black belts. Only very few have been able to complete this mission of fighting 100 opponents consecutively and winning at least 50%.

I leave you today with some wisdom from the legendary founder of Kyoshinkai karate, Masutatsu Oyama.

“If you learn a technique and repeat it 1,000 times, you are still learning. If you repeat it 10,000 times, then you know it. But if you want to own it, you need to repeat it 100,000 times.”

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