Over the weekend of 18-19 March WAKO Oceania held its inaugural WAKO Continental Kickboxing championships at the Arnold Classics Multi-Sport event in Melbourne, Australia.

Over 170 fighters competed in this event across all WAKO disciplines and fighters from across the Oceania region enjoyed 2 days of exciting competition in the Melbourne Convention Centre. The quality of fights was tremendous and visiting spectators were impressed with the WAKO style of Kickboxing.

During the course of the event, the competition area was visited by Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger who sat and watched a demonstration by the WAKO Australia Kickboxing club Martial Energy. WAKO Australia Official Vanessa Jenkins and WAKO Oceania President Pete Thompson were lucky enough to get up close and personal with Mr. Schwarzenegger who expressed how impressed he was with the WAKO Kickboxing and in particular with the younger participants whom he encouraged to continue in their training and competition.

The exposure WAKO received during this event was tremendous, with the Arnold Classics Australia host to over 10,000 competitors and visitors from around the world the spectator numbers for the WAKO events was huge and generated a lot of excitement in the Convention Centre. It was great to fly the WAKO flag during this event!

WAKO Oceania President Mr. Pete Thompson said: “This event has generated considerable interest in WAKO in Oceania and we hope to leverage some of this interest into the further expansion of WAKO across the Pacific. This Championships, the first of its kind in Oceania, provides us a lot of promise for the future of Kickboxing in this part of the World“.