Everything Begins With A Vision.

Macho Martial Arts was created by 8th degree Tae Kwon Do black belt Grandmaster Soo Se Cho in 1980 after he recognized a need for greater safety in martial arts training and competition. Armed with nearly 30 years of martial arts training and teaching experience from Korea to Turkey to the U.S., Master Cho passionately designed Macho’s original line of martial arts sparring gear, enlisting his own Tae Kwon Do students to try out his inventions, advances and improvements. They provided ideas and feedback to help him make the products better, as well as input on the type of sparring gear they would like to use. Many from this original group are still at Macho today, carrying on Master Cho’s legacy of excellence.

The first pieces of Macho Martial Arts sparring gear were created from scratch. The hand-dipped experiments were done in a cut-off oil drum in a borrowed building, and our team has always taken pride in the high-quality products that were created following these first few trials.

After just a year in business, Macho was having a hard time keeping up with orders. By March of 1981, our headquarters moved from being in a borrowed building to a 7200 sq. ft. one large enough to fit our growing company’s needs. Much to our surprise, our team needed more room just six months later. Macho had no idea it would be manufacturing hundreds of thousands of pieces of gear annually in a 70,000 square foot facility.

From the beginning, it wasn’t about being first, but our team did it anyway. It wasn’t about creating innovations. But we did so anyway. Overall, it was our love for the sport and recognized need for safety in martial arts sparring competitions that have kept us motivated and focused on creating the best equipment for martial artists to use.