The beginnings of the B.K.O was formed in 1985 when the Basingstoke Wasp club broke up. Ron peploe formed the Kobushi Ashi Karate club and became increasingly interested in testing the martial arts he had been taught and competing against other styles. During these times the club was based at Basing village hall and had a further class at Lychpit hall. The uniform was White jacket with black trousers.
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At this time the club was still very much Wado Ryu karate based and retained the Katas and blocking defences of this style, but greater a emphasis was made on sparring and bagwork. The club began competing in open tournaments. these ranged from the Welsh Karate Grand prix to kung Fu competitions in Gillingham and W.U.K.O tournaments around London. The club also took part in many demonstrations and ran floats in the Basingstoke carnival. Michael Ind joined us at this time and soon became a very valued member of the club.
In 1987 Ron moved to Hartley Witney and opened a new club. After a demonstration by Ron, Roger Upton, Paul Newman and junior members of the club We signed 70 new members, This increased to 80 on the first night of training. We didn't even know there were that many people in Hartley Witney.
The club also expanded to weapons training, mainly Nunchaku with Bob Fermor but also Bo and Sai techniques were also explored. In 1987 the club held it's first tournamenmt at Basing village hall. This was combined with a Nunchaku course to be run by Bob Fermor. The competition was a great success involving most of the clubs from the Basingstoke area with a high standard of fighting.
Following this tournament Ron moved the club back to it's roots at John hunt school, Popley and ran seperate classes for adults and children and developing further the freestyle concept. This time was a golden era for club membership. the childrens class was oversubscribed and we had FIVE instructors training all grades. Adult sessions became more and more fitness/sparring oriented with less emphasis on katas or forms. The club became known as the Basingstoke Karate/Kickboxing Organisation.
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John Hunt remained the club base for the next 8 years with other smaller venues springing up such as the club in the old green shed at Oakley. This was where Chris Tong first became associated with the club. The club ran small tournaments for children and organised seminars from Jo Tierney and Kevin Brewerton.
BKO travelled far and wide to tournaments at this time. Manchester FSK, MAI tournaments, Lau gar and Combat opens as well as the WAKOs plus many smaller competitions and fight nights. Seniors, Juniors and children were all keen to test their skills out in these venues and the BKO met with some success.
in 1989 a merger was suggested between BKO and Terry Merritt's TM Freestyle club from Dorking. Like the BKO, Terry's squad was taken from a single club and it was thought that toghether we could make a squad to challenge the best on the circuit at that time.We attended all the major tournaments and eventually suceeded in beating most of the best squads and achieved wins in all the championships individually. Terry influenced Ron into completely embracing the Freestyle attitude to training and competing. He completely dropped the Kata and stylised blocks and emphasised bag and pad work with students always working in pairs. The adult club moved to The Irish centre in Basingstoke where it remains and became the Basingstoke Kickboxing Organisation.
L toR Steve Curran, Mick Wilson, Dave Oliver, Ron Peploe, Chris Tong,
Mick Ind, Pete
As you can see the club strip at this time was the TM Freestyle team colours red and black. I think these were trophies from the British continuous championships that we won and were promised a free ticket to compete in the USA but as with most things promised they never materialised. Training would take place here on Mondays and Thursdays and consist of a lot of stamina work combined with bag/padwork, partner training and lots of sparring. Sometimes we would come in and begin sparring (without a warm up) then just carry on for the whole night with the music blaring away, then go to the Bounty pub for a drink and a sing song afterwards.
In the mid 90s and after many sucesses Ron and Terry decided to concentrate on their individual clubs once more. there were many reasons for this, one being that the TM Freestyle team tended to overshadow the club a little too much and it was important that the morale of the members of the BKO was kept high. I would like to say here that Terry Merrit was the best martial arts coach I have ever known, his attitude to training the individual and building a team were excellent. What most people don't understand is that Terry's team WAS his club. That was it, no huge squad to choose from, If you went traning at Terry's club you would see the eight or so guys who were fighting that sunday. And these guys beat everyone eventually.
The club suits changed again to the striking Blue and yellow stripe. (Basingstoke colours. also thunderbird colours and Ffyfes bananas colours,( but that still didn't secure us a sponsorship deal). This era introduced the likes of Rob Read, Peter Rooney, Rob Bix, Dave Oliver, Mel and Jamie Cannings and Carl Storey to the tourmnament scene. BKO continued to attend the major tournaments including the newly formed National Super League run by Neville Wray. We also began the British Kids Open tournaments in Basingstoke. These competitions were run with a vision to give experience to newcomers and a challenge to seasoned fighters, as well as allowing maximum exposure to all fdighters. The tournaments took place on a Saturday and were run on a round robin basis so that each competitor would get as many fights as possible. the initial 'leagues' would then produce a knockout semi-final/final stage. Points from the four tournaments would be accrued to find a grand champion. All winners were to recieve a substantial trophy and a comprehensive write up would appear in the martial arts press. not just a list of winners but observed comments.Rons ambition at the time was to run a large tournament using up to 10 matted areas running continuously and complete the whole competition within 2-3 hours. Ron felt this would solve the problem of these all day affairs and improve the attendance of both the spectators and competitors alike. The competitions ran for four years and were a success with the competitors and spectators but BKO didn't have the manpower to run the competition to it's full capacity so they were stopped in favour of smaller local tournaments.
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Click on the pictures to go to the British kids open page.
And now the present day. The BKO are still training at the Irish Centre, Basingstoke at 7.00pm on Thursday nights. The club is still dedicated to tournament fighting and competition. we have had a years rest due to commitments by senior members of the club and disillusionment with the competition scene in Britain at this time. The club is moving forwards in all directions, (Hence this website), and 2003 will see us further improving and developing to keep Basingstoke on the martial arts map.