Kickboxing as I understand it is the sport that became popular in Japan in the 1960s and made its way across the Pacific. its a blend of Muay Thai and Khmer boxing with karate and boxing. Is That the sport of kickboxing this forum refers too or do you include Savate and other styles which are competition sports too?
Kickboxing is so generic a term as to be almost meaningless - essentially it can mean almost anything. In essence there are 4 variations 1) Muay Thai (all in) 2) "K1 Style" (low kicks no elbows) - this would include savate (or more accurately "boxe francais") 3) "Full Contact Karate" (no elbows or knees, all strikes above waist) 4) Semi-contact (which is really just point fighting but done on a continous basis)
This is how I'd categorise it but it still has a lot of flexible. For instance the Dutch actually took a lot of their style from Karate, rather than Muay Thai.
Are you right? Yes! N0! Maybe! Kickboxing is a great example of martial arts as a whole. ther eis no single organising body everyone has slightly different and equally legitimate ways of looking at things. because they are different but equal no one can agree who will be in charge because standardising would remove most of the varied but legitimate stuff. In this sort of situation some definitions fit some purposes better than others - so you might think about why do you what to define kickboxing then pick the definition that works best for you. although Vitckenstine or was it Kirkacard ? or Hidiker? any way somebody way cleverer than me did say that nothing that has a history can be defined.
Not sure about other countries, but I'd be surprised if it weren't present there as well: I myself to kickboxing in light contact: KOs aren't the goal, but also not semi-contact. Strikes do rattle and you certainly feel them, but since KO isn't the goal, I think it's not as hard in comparison. It's points based. During training we alternate: Mostly without lowkicks, but sometimes we include them (mostly when drilling though; not in Sparring). We don't use elbows usually. At times we do a little groundwork and Ukemi, but mainly because it's also supposed to be a self-defense-y. The teacher also reduced that a lot during the last two years, which I personally think is a shame. Since I'm really bad at it (I have the feeling, that we don't get properly introduced to sparring, as it's mainly "Learning by doing" with everything included right away), I'm fine with it though; otherwise I might have ended on the boards already.