“Your Karate's a Joke!”

A Personal Journey to Prove It’s Not and to Reignite the Warrior Spirit

- Sean Kanan

Back in 2018, when Cobra Kai was just a hit on YouTube Red and not yet a megahit on Netflix, I met Sean Kanan at the Dragonfest martial arts expo in Burbank, California. My main reason for approaching him, of course, was to ask if he would be reprising his role as Mike Barnes, the “bad boy” of The Karate Kid Part III, in the sequel series. He said that he’d love to but that nothing had been decided. Afterward, we struck up a conversation, during which I learned that Kanan is much more than an actor who played a martial artist; he has a long history in the arts and still trains. We stayed in touch over the years, and when he called to let me know he was about to take the trip that’s chronicled here, I jumped at the chance to get the report for Black Belt.

— Robert W. Young, Editor-in-Chief

Sean Kanan (left), Fumio Demura (center) and William Stoner.

As I kissed my beautiful wife Michele goodbye, two things occurred to me. First, this was going to be the longest time we’ve been separated in our eight-year marriage — I barely needed both hands to count the times we’d slept apart. Second, I was about to fly to a remote area in Northern California to stay at the home of a martial arts teacher I’d never met.

How did I arrive at this moment? On the internet, of course. To be exact, it was on social media, the source of all life’s great decisions.

It was a few short weeks earlier when Adam McKinley began sending me videos of himself executing the most dynamic kicks ever. His technique was jaw-dropping. I’d never seen anything like it, not even in the movies — and I work in movies!