History

Growing up in a martial arts family, Michael Foley and his brothers were basically raised in the dojo. Mike Foley Sr., Michael's father, founded Foley's Martial Arts in 1978, giving the brothers exposure to combat sports at a young age. The Kenpo Karate black belt, and tournament fighting champion provided the platform for his sons along with hundreds of other martial artist in the province. Working tirelessly, Mike Foley Sr. laid the foundation for several championship martial arts careers, including his second son Michael.

Michael started competing in 1988 and took part in every available tournament. In the Spring of 1989 he attended his first out of province tournament at the Kenpo Nationals in Montreal Quebec where he took a bronze medal.

Seven years later, in 1996, Michael won his first Senior Men’s black belt fighting tournament and held the top spot at the black belt level locally for the next six years.

Competing in karate tournaments for ten years led Michael and his brothers into competitive kickboxing in 1998. The following winter, they began training with professional world kickboxing champion and coach of the Canadian amateur team, Muzammal Nawaz. Mr. Nawaz helped facilitate the boys move from hard style karate into competitive kickboxing and provided them with many competition opportunities. In December 2000, Michael and his brother Jason made the Canadian national kickboxing team by winning at the Canada Cup team qualifiers. They then travelled to Greece in May 2001 to compete at the WPKA world championships. Jason took a bronze medal and Michael took a gold medal in the continuous kickboxing division and a silver in the semi-contact division.

Michael traveled for the next few years competing in parts of Canada, the United States, Europe and Africa with the Canadian team within different sanctioning organizations such as the WKA, WPKA, KICK-USA and WAKO. In that time, Michael won several major events including two gold medals at the 2001 KICK-USA North American championships as well as his second national gold medal at the 2002 WKA national championships.

In the Fall of 2003, he opened the Foley's Martial Arts - St. John's academy at the College of the North Atlantic. Later that winter, Michael moved the academy into the new Hard-Tack boxing gym down the street.

In 2004, Michael bowed out of the sport karate arena in order to focus on his competitive kickboxing career and to pursue training in jiu jitsu and submission grappling. At the time, Michael was cross training with the amateur boxing team at the Hard-Tack gym in St. John’s as well as with members of the Canadian sport jiu jitsu team from Ontario.

Between 2004-2007, Michael co-founded the Newfoundland & Labrador Council of Amateur Sport Kickboxing (now known as Kickboxing Newfoundland & Labrador) and lobbied for the legalization of amateur sport kickboxing in the province. In a lengthy process that ended in 2007, the sport of kickboxing was made legal. This paved the way for Michael winning the main event in this provinces first ever kickboxing tournament that June.

In 2007, Michael, his brother Jason and several other team mates travelled to Thailand to live in and train at professional Muay Thai camps. There, they trained with many top tier professional Muay Thai kickboxing champions from Thailand as well as many other fighters from all across the globe. Within a month of returning to Canada, Michael won the Atlantic Canadian under 86kgs Kickboxing title belt. That same year, he had the chance to meet Professor Pedro Sauer, the world renowned teacher of Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Michael and his brothers began a regular travelling cycle back and forth between Professor Sauer’s home academy in the United States and their home in Newfoundland, while, also bringing Professor Sauer and his black belts in for training seminars. The brothers also took the opportunity to travel to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil to train with Professor Sauer at several famous Jiu Jitsu academies including the world famous Gracie Humaita Academy.

In 2010, Michael won his third National championship by capturing the under 91kgs Canadian Amateur Kickboxing Championship title belt in a five round, Low-Kick/International rules main event.

In 2011, the academy found it's new home at 117 Ropewalk Lane in St. John's. A 2200 square foot facility that offers over 1000 square feet of fully matted training area, shower facilities, air conditioning and a pro shop.

Currently, Michael is teaching at the academy full time and is heavily involved in promoting sport kickboxing in the province of Newfoundland & Labrador. He also coaches his academy's competition team as well as continually travelling to training and competition destinations around the globe. To date, the academy competition team has captured three provincial titles, one Atlantic Canadian title, seven national titles, two North American titles, one intercontinental title and three gold medals at the world championships.

For more information on Michael or any of the instructors, please visit the Instructors section of our website.