Author Akira Toriyama was heavily inspired by martial arts movies of the 80s when composing Dragon Ball.

What martial arts styles does Son Goku use?

Uncle Akira Toriyama – author of Dragon Ball was greatly inspired by martial arts movies in the 80s when composing his brainchild. So exactly which martial arts styles did Mr. Tori use on our main character – Son Goku?

At a glance, Goku’s attacks bear the mark of Kickboxing at extremely high speed. But if we dig deeper, we will see that Goku’s style is somewhat more complex, Kickboxing itself is also developed based on Karate, Muay Thai and boxing. Goku actually uses attacks that are a mixture of Karate, Wushu and Wing Chun. Specifically, let’s see below!

Defensive stance:

Son Goku’s stance is relatively similar to Bat Chi Quan, sometimes similar to Shaolin.

Punch:

Goku’s punch is taken directly from boxing, the punch is thrown straight and fast, directed at the face and chest, very similar to boxers. Sometimes Goku also attacks with his elbow and is somewhat similar to Tan Thu Fist.

Kick:

Goku’s kicks are mostly aimed at the head and less often the chest. Goku does not kick his opponent’s legs, while Muay Thai and Kickboxing use it quite a lot. So in this category, we can see that Goku mainly uses moves from Karate and Taekwondo, two martial arts originating from Japan and Korea, because their rules prohibit kicking the opponent’s legs during competition.

Bite:

Bite is Songoku’s “killer” attack, which is also a common high-damage attack used many times in Dragon Ball . The first person to “taste” this move was King Piccolo when he grabbed Goku’s collar and he bit his finger. We can mention many names that suffered the same fate as King Picocolo: Frieza was bitten on the tail, Kid Buu was bitten on the hand or the god of destruction Beerus and Goku were bitten on the tail. However, it is unknown what martial art the idea for this attack of Goku came from.

Blocking and counterattacking:

Goku blocks attacks with his hands like a boxer and counters with very high reflexes and speed, similar to Wing Chun. What’s quite special is that in the movie Broly, there is a scene where Goku in Super Saiyan God mode blocks Broly’s punch with… Tai Chi.

So if Goku’s style came to life, would it be effective? That’s quite difficult to predict, because no one is proficient enough in so many types of martial arts to combine them. However, there is a person with a mixed fighting style of Kungfu and Kickboxing, that is Stephen Thompson, a UFC fighter, ranked 5th in the UFC Welterweight rankings. Thompson is famous for his record of 57 unbeaten Kickboxing matches (20 amateur matches and 17 professional matches).