Martial Arts Australia didn't start as a business plan, it started with one instructor's belief that martial artists are stronger when they share what they know instead of guarding it. Three decades later, that belief has grown into the country's most established peak body, and the single home for everything an Australian instructor needs to run a safer, more professional, more profitable school.

How We Got Here

The idea began in the mid-1980s, when founder and current Chairman Graham Slater (9th Dan) was travelling extensively to martial arts schools around the world, training, teaching, and building relationships wherever he went. Out of those exchanges grew a genuine "circle of knowledge": instructors from different styles and backgrounds sharing techniques and ideas in a deliberately non-political space, where every level of experience had something to contribute and something to gain.

In Australia, that circle became a regular gathering, local instructors meeting monthly to train and share expertise, with some travelling interstate just to be part of it. The idea resonated, and in 1993 it was formalised as the International Karate Alliance, launching simultaneously in England and Japan. It spread fast, reaching fifteen countries within a few years, each with its own Regional Director.

As instructors from styles well beyond karate began joining, the natural next step followed: within four years, the organisation evolved into the International Martial Arts Alliance (IMA) a genuine cross-discipline body, no longer limited to one style. Then, in 2004, Martial Arts Australia (MAA) was established as the primary brand serving the Australian region specifically, built to give local instructors a dedicated home, while remaining connected to the broader international network. Today, MAA is the single front door for membership and services in Australia: wherever you're located, everything runs through MAA.

Solving a Real Problem for Senior Instructors

One issue kept surfacing in those early years: instructors who broke away from their head teacher, or whose teacher passed away, often had no legitimate way to keep advancing their own grade or title, even while students coming up behind them expected exactly that. Instructors are, understandably, reluctant to grade themselves. The IMA built a genuinely credible alternative: a master's panel process for evaluating and grading senior instructors fairly. That system has since become one of the most respected benchmarks in the industry and it's still how we assess senior gradings today, right up to 9th Dan.

That's the history, here's what actually matters to instructors now. Martial Arts Australia exists to give Australian school owners an extensive range of discounted and subsidised services, all in one place. Most instructors first come to us for the credibility, instructor certification, and business support and quickly discover there's a great deal more on offer: the best available deals on software, insurance, equipment, websites, courses, and direct debit fee collection, among much else.

Our group buying power is genuinely unmatched, we're constantly negotiating new deals with preferred providers. The bigger the network gets, the better the rates become, and every member benefits from that scale, not just the newest or largest schools.

In 2006, we launched our own Martial Arts TV Show because television remains one of the most effective ways to showcase instructors and bring martial arts to a wider public audience. The logic is simple: the more popular we make this sport, the more students walk into dojos everywhere. Since then, we've built a run of TV brands such as: Interactive Martial Arts, iMartial Arts TV, Martial Arts TV, and our current series, Kapow TV covering how-to content, fight shows, tournaments, and more.