The brainchild of influential Hong Kong sports administrator Wai Kee-shun, policeman Elms and multifaceted fighter Kong Fu-tak, the organisation burned as brightly as it did briefly in the early 1980s, packing out the QEII and Southorn Stadiums with fight cards staged up to three times a month that made heroes of a procession of local fighters.

Among them was Kong, who also played a major role in getting the promotion off the ground and who had carved a reputation for himself in the fight world by facing off against American multiple world kick boxing champion Benny “The Jet” Urquidez in a bout famed for its bloody brutality in 1981.

“[Elms and Wai] saw that fight and saw me as a young man with a great fighting spirit,” Kong said.

Others to sign on included one-time Shek Kip Mei street fighter Eldy “Fiery Fighter” Chan Man-yee and former Wan Chai wild man Ponson “The Big Gun” Sin Lam-yuk who found a focus in life through kung fu.

All three would later go on to establish gyms across Greater China and share their passion for martial arts with tens if not hundreds of thousands of students.

But first came their own fight club.

“We were looking for ways to promote martial arts in Hong Kong and give our fighters a chance to perform for the people,” Wai explained.

They were also looking to do something a little different. What made the cards unique for their time – and groundbreaking in terms of where martial arts has gone since – were the regulations laid down under the guidelines of the Full Contact Boxing Referees Association, which combined rules from kung fu and karate, kick-boxing and Muay Thai.

“Basically you could do anything you wanted to except roll around on the ground,” Elms said. “We were developing a style that was all our own, something unique to Hong Kong. It was a mix of everything.”

Wai’s input was crucial to the promotion’s success, given the experience he’d had running the Hong Kong Boxing Association, among others. Wai came from a martial arts background himself, having as young boy worked under the tutelage of one of the disciples of the legendary martial artist and all-round hero Wong Fei-hung, whose exploits have over the years inspired the likes of the Jackie Chan classic Drunken Master (1978) and more than 100 other martial arts films.

“At first I was a newspaper man,” said Wai, who with his family had started the now-defunct Tin Tin Daily News in the 1950s. “But I was always interested in sports too and they became more and more important to me. I thought that it was important for Hong Kong to recognise and celebrate its martial arts legacy.”

A shared global passion for martial arts had been ignited by the rise of Bruce Lee to international stardom in the early 1970s. Thanks to Lee’s hits Way of the Dragon (1972) and Enter the Dragon (1973) and a shared fascination with his tragically short life, martial arts competitions were no longer either banned – as had been the case in Hong Kong during post-war colonial days – or considered the last bastion of society’s good-for-nothings.

The rise of such organisations as the World Kickboxing Association, which staged fights in Hong Kong and throughout Asia, had given local promoters encouragement while the fight philosophy that Bruce Lee had inspired – that martial artists should learn from as many and varied codes as possible – had meant that rules were being expanded. Fighters, too, were more ready to explore what was possible.

“The first time I got hit in the face I thought ‘this is something for me’,” said the now 59-year-old Chan. “I had boxing, I had martial arts, I had legs and knees and everything so I always had the chance for a knockout.

“It didn’t matter to me which style as long as it was a fight. If [modern MMA rules] had been around of course I would have tried them.”

For Sin, the fights gave him a chance to test his skills against the city’s – and the world’s – best, while making good money at the same time. The now 63-year-old had announced himself by fighting Cambodia’s Kun Khmer kick-boxing champion in Saigon in 1974 as the Vietnam war was swirling around that city.

“The money was good,” he said. “But mostly we just wanted to fight. We wanted to test ourselves against the best and see who we could beat. You never cared about getting hit, you just wanted to raise your hand at the end.”

But by the mid-1980s, fate had conspired to work against the Full Contact Boxing organisation. There had been a death in a martial arts bout – ruled misadventure but alerting authorities to the rise of combat sports in the city. There had also been a number of questionable bouts, raising rumours of fixed fights, and there was, of course, the secret and often massive illegal side betting. However, the death blow came when Elms and his referees presented their rules to the appropriate government departments to have them officially ratified.

“Over-governance killed it,” Elms said. “We gave them our rules but they said if nobody else is doing this, you can’t do it. The fighters wanted it, the gyms wanted it and the fans wanted it but the government didn’t and so we all had to go back home to lick our wounds and then move on to something else. The thinking was that we in Hong Kong had to follow what other people did and we should not create something unique.”

In the years that followed organisations such as Shooto in Japan started adding grappling to the sort of mixed stand-up rules that the Full Contact Boxing organisation had championed. Soon the Gracie family would popularise Brazilian jiu-jitsu in North American. Within a decade of Full Contact Boxing’s demise, mixed martial arts as we now know it had emerged.

Fighters such as Kong and Chan turned their attentions full-time to Muay Thai, with the support of the Hong Kong government thanks to that sport’s long- established and internationally recognised rule set.

“There is a legacy there, which we are all proud of,” Elms said. “If you look how many people are learning martial arts and the gyms run by Kong and Eldy and Ponson and everywhere you’ll see they’re not only learning fighting skills, but life skills. They are learning about the philosophy and the way, if you will, of martial arts. But there’s no sense thinking about what might have been. We had our time and it didn’t work out. You move on. It’s a shame but that’s life sometimes.”