Robert "Bob" Jones is widely described as the "Father of Australian Kickboxing." He co-founded Zen Do Kai on 1 June 1970, coined the term "kickboxing" for use in Australia, and built the Bob Jones Martial Arts (BJMA) organisation into the largest martial arts body in the South Pacific. That trajectory — from Melbourne street culture in the 1950s to an organisation spanning 1,000 schools and more than 20,000 students — is the subject of this article.
The research record on Jones is reasonably detailed in some areas and thin in others. What follows is grounded in the available evidence. Where that evidence runs out, this article says so.
Before the Dojo: Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s
Bob Jones did not come to martial arts through a traditional path. He grew up in Melbourne during a period shaped by post-war immigration — the "ten pound Pom" era brought a large European influx into Australian cities, creating culturally dense urban environments with their own friction. Jones was part of a youth subculture he identifies with the "Phantom Twins," a street gang active in his adolescence. The Australian media labelled these youth cultures "Bodgies and Widgies," framing them as a social problem.
His early employment included managing venues connected to the "Sly Grog" trade — illicit liquor operations that flourished under restrictive 6 p.m. closing laws. Managing those establishments gave him an early, non-theoretical education in conflict and crowd control.
A health crisis in his late teens interrupted this trajectory. Jones developed chronic gallstones and liver damage, associated with the drinking and poor diet of gang life. He subsisted on medical charcoal tablets for roughly two years. The experience instilled a permanent commitment to physical conditioning and clean eating — a discipline he later required of his fighters.
On 22 November 1963 — the same day as the Kennedy assassination — Jones formalised his security operation. At a lunch at Leo's Spaghetti Bar in St Kilda with colleagues Dave Milne and Bill Sabodka, the Bob Jones Corporation (BJC) was established as a Resource Management Group providing professional security for suburban dance halls and rock-and-roll promotions. This predated his formal martial arts training by two years. The organisation was built on crowd-control experience before it was built on martial arts.
The Apprenticeship: Tae Kwon Do and Goju Kai
Jones commenced formal martial arts training on 3 March 1965. His first instructor was Jack Rozinsky, who taught a Korean Tae Kwon Do style at a venue behind the East St Kilda Post Office. Rozinsky's classes were, in Jones's description, "raw and tough" — emphasising the kind of self-discipline that convinced him any goal was achievable through belief and dedication.
He later moved to Tino Ceberano's Goju Kai — a Japanese system meaning "hard and soft" — which provided a more structured syllabus integrating physical and internal development. Jones progressed quickly; he was teaching beginners as an "advanced white belt" to meet the organisation's growth demands.
His primary mentors were Rozinsky, Ceberano, and Sal Ebanez. On 13 December 1969, Jones was awarded his First Degree Black Belt by Ceberano and Ebanez. Even during this apprenticeship, however, he was integrating boxing, judo, and wrestling into his training — well before "mixed martial arts" became a recognised term. His metric was simple: if a technique failed in a nightclub, it was discarded, regardless of its traditional pedigree.
June 1, 1970: The Founding of Zen Do Kai
By 1970, Jones had concluded that existing Japanese and Korean systems were too rigid for the Australian environment. He wanted a system that was total in its fighting application but open in its structure — one that evolved based on what actually worked rather than what tradition required.
On 1 June 1970, the first Zen Do Kai club opened at Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. The name translates as "The Best of Everything in Progression." It was a deliberate departure from fixed lineages, and the founding principle was that ZDK must remain open to techniques and ideas from anywhere in the world.
A critical early collaborator was Richard Norton, who would later build a substantial career in martial arts cinema. Jones hired Norton in 1970 as Chief Instructor for the Melbourne dojo. Norton's technical range — spanning Okinawan weaponry through to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu — complemented Jones's promotional and strategic abilities. Together, they built a system designed explicitly for bouncers and security professionals, grounded in what they called "street-smart realism."
"The Best of Everything in Progression" — the meaning of Zen Do Kai, as described in BJMA's own history of the organisation.
The founding philosophy rested on four pillars: progression (continuous evolution), practicality (functional efficiency as the primary test for any technique), Bushido (loyalty, courage, and honour), and equality (mutual respect regardless of rank). The first of those — progression — is the reason the system kept changing. It was designed to.
Security as a Testing Ground
The credibility of Zen Do Kai in its early years was built through the security industry. During the 1970s and 1980s, the BJC became the dominant security provider for international rock-and-roll tours in Australia.
The pivot began in 1972. The October arrest of Joe Cocker in Adelaide created international media fallout that made touring artists nervous about Australia. Promoter Paul Dainty approached Jones with a direct requirement: Keith Richards and Mick Jagger would not tour unless Jones could guarantee the most professional security in the country. Jones assembled an elite group including Richard Norton, Dave Berry, Nicky Pappas, and Paul Flemming, and secured the 1973 Rolling Stones tour.
That success launched an eighteen-year period in which the BJC secured almost every major act visiting Australia — ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Boy George, Linda Ronstadt, and others. Jones recounts training Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks at her Beverly Hills home, integrating martial movement patterns into her stage performance preparation.
This security work was not peripheral to the development of ZDK — it was the laboratory. Jones has stated that from the 1970s onward, every BJC black belt worked in security, and that the constant exposure to real violence forced genuine technical evolution. If a technique did not work in the field, it was removed from the system. The anecdotes from this period include confronting the "Highway 61" bikie gang alone in Auckland and a particularly serious altercation in Maui that Jones says required eight pages to recount in his autobiography.
The Birth of Australian Kickboxing
By the mid-1970s, Jones identified a gap between traditional karate competition and full-contact fighting. On 9 September 1976, he promoted Australia's inaugural kickboxing event — initially called "Full Contact Karate," using boxing gloves and modified Marquis of Queensbury rules permitting kicks only above the waist.
"If it doesn't work you find out about it in the square ring." — Bob Jones, on the purpose of full-contact competition.
In 1978, Jones travelled to Los Angeles to meet Paul Hanson, President of the World Karate Association. It was during this meeting that Jones coined the term "Kickboxing" for his promotional region. Returning to Australia, he formed the World Kickboxing Association (WKA) as a sanctioning body to provide international credibility and standardised rules for the sport.
Subsequent milestones in the development of the sport in Australia include a 1980 affiliation with Paul Mazluk and the ALL STARS rating system — a standardised tournament ranking framework — and the formal introduction of leg kicks into the Australian system in 1983, facilitated through contact with Benny Urquidez.
By 1980, ZDK had grown to 300 clubs. Jones introduced the FAST (Freefighting, Forms, And Self-defence Tournaments) system in 1983, designed to expose all students to heavy competition and raise the national standard by making ZDK the most competitive style in the country.
The Muay Thai Integration
A significant technical evolution began in 1986. While on a world tour with senior instructor Rod Stroud, connected to kickboxing and festival events, Jones encountered Muay Thai — both in Thailand and through Tom Harinck in Amsterdam. The eight-weapons system, incorporating knees and elbows alongside punches and kicks, convinced him that ZDK's curriculum needed further modification.
A principle that shaped the integration came through Tekken Donmez, a fighter Jones trained with during this period: it is easier to remove weapons from a trained system for a specific contest than to add them under pressure. Train all eight weapons and subtract what a ruleset prohibits; do not try to produce a trained elbow in a real situation if you have never drilled it.
Muay Thai was formally introduced into Zen Do Kai classes in 1990, following preparatory trips to Sityodtong in Pattaya in 1988 and 1989. The integration was institutionalised — not left informal — and produced one of the distinctive characteristics of senior ZDK training today: systematic elbow work, clinch-position knees, and leg-checking mechanics derived from Thai boxing.
Jones supported Australian fighters through this period and beyond. Stan "The Man" Longinidis, one of the most decorated Australian kickboxers, received support from Jones on the international stage, including at the inaugural K-1 promotion in 1995.
Philosophy: Bushido and Warrior Consciousness
Despite its reputation for physical hardness and street-level pragmatism, Zen Do Kai is grounded in the Bushido code. Jones translates this through seven virtues: Rectitude, Courage, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honour, and Loyalty.
His personal philosophy extends further into what he calls "warrior consciousness" — the unification of matter (the physical body) and spirit (the soul). Jones teaches that a martial artist has only one true opponent: the inner demon of fear and insecurity. Martial arts training and meditation are, in his framework, the primary vehicles for dissolving that demon and building what he terms "impregnable self-esteem."
This is expressed in the "Three Dragons" system:
- Red: The Physical — grounding and raw power.
- Yellow: The Psychological — focus and mental resilience.
- Blue: The Spiritual — attaining the "white circle of karma."
The grading process in ZDK reflects this philosophy's severity. Jones introduced the "thirty-round" marathon for higher-degree gradings — a test of endurance that became institutionalised in the organisation's culture. This reputation was, reportedly, influential enough to shape the depiction of warrior culture in the New Zealand film Once Were Warriors, though the precise nature of that influence is not documented in detail in available sources.
ZDK traditions include the 24-hour wearing of the black belt upon promotion to "Sho Dan Ho" (probationary black belt), symbolising entry into "Senjo" — the beginning of the true path. The system's kata — Sanchin (Three Battle), Tensho (Rotating Palms), Saifa (Lightning Strikes Twice) — are interpreted not as fixed routines but as "liquid and flowing" expressions of maximum potential.
Building the Organisation: Security Legislation and Public Profile
Beyond the dojo, Jones's influence extended into public policy. Between 1990 and 1996, he worked with Victorian Police and the Hotelier Association to develop what is described as the world's first "Crowd Control" legislation. This transformed the security industry from an unregulated bouncer culture into a professional, licensed cadre of Crowd Controllers. The BJC and its associates developed the training packages that became the benchmark for modern security education in Victoria.
Throughout the 1990s, Jones maintained a public profile outside martial arts circles. He held a weekly self-defence segment on Good Morning Australia with Bert Newton, using unconventional teaching props — including a queen-sized bed — to demonstrate practical ground defence for women. In 1997, he received the Blitz Martial Arts Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award.
Current Role and Legacy
Today, BJMA is the largest martial arts organisation in the South Pacific, with 1,000 schools and over 20,000 students. Bob Jones, now holding the rank of Ninth or Tenth Degree — the sources are not consistent on the exact figure — continues to oversee the evolution of Zen Do Kai from his Melbourne base. He is referred to within the organisation as "The Chief."
His autobiographical trilogy, beginning with Let the Good Times Roll, provides the most detailed primary account of his life and the development of ZDK. Jones has described the arc of his career as a transition from "the Art of Survival" to "the Art of Peace" — a framing that reflects how his philosophy evolved even as the system he built continued to prioritise functional combat.
The specific claim that Jones is the "Father of Australian Kickboxing" rests on two concrete facts: he promoted Australia's first full-contact event on 9 September 1976, and he coined the term "kickboxing" for the Australian promotional region in 1978. Both are documented in BJMA's own historical record. The broader legacy claim — that his work was foundational to the Australian combat sports landscape — is difficult to dispute given the scale of what BJMA became and the roles that ZDK-trained fighters played in Australian and international competition through the 1980s and 1990s.
For practitioners at Wolf Clan Zen Do Kai in the Huon Valley, the connection to Jones is direct: the system they train is the one he designed, and the philosophy they encounter at every grading — the commitment to progression, the demand for practicality, the Bushido code — originated with him. That lineage is worth knowing.