 Fear does not exist on this channel, does it? Pain does not exist on this channel, does it? Defeat does not exist on this channel, does it? All right, all right, all right, all right, you got the idea. And it's no secret that YouTube's newest show, Cobra Kai, is an internet sensation. But we're not here to go into review the show today, but rather I would like to address the burning question that many fans seem to be asking. What kind of karate is in Cobra Kai? 34 years after the famous crane kick felt around the world, we're treated to a modern update of the karate kitsaga. It plucks the strings of nostalgia from my generation and it strikes the cord of inspiration for the young generation. I am part of the legion that stumbled across this under the radar hit back in 1984 and decided that I too wanted to learn the way of the fist. Martial arts schools in America weren't as prevalent in the 80s as they are today and the term karate itself is still often used as a general term for most martial arts. But as I grew up I asked myself, what kind of style is it? What did Mr. Miyagi teach Daniel and what kind of karate is in Cobra Kai? There's a lot of discussion about this online and there's a bunch of theories, but we're going to run down some of the more popular opinions and evidence that has been presented to us. So also for the purpose of this discussion we will be including the original three karate kid films and the Cobra Kai series. We will not be basing anything off the next karate kid or 2010 karate kid remake. Okay, time to geek out. Before we answer the question of what kind of karate is in Cobra Kai, let's point something out. If we're talking about karate kid in general, there's actually kind of two different styles to approach. We've got Miyagi style and Johnny style, you know the Cobra Kai way and the Miyagi Dough way. Basically when they filmed the karate kid back in 1983 came out in 1984. All choreography was done by Pat Johnson and he's one of the earlier martial arts greats. Chuck Norris is top students. He's a grandmaster or really high ranking master of Tanksudou. He did all the fight choreography in the film as well as he starred as the head referee in the tournaments in both first and third movie. What I find is really fun trivia is I love the way he approached choreography in the film. He didn't just get all the actors together and say you're going to do this, you're going to do this. Mr. Johnson actually kind of he worked on the dynamic as well as the art. So Ralph Machio and Pat Merida were taught together. They were trained separately from all the other actors. Mr. Johnson worked with them two together so they actually could develop a bond between their training. When it came to the Cobra's Mr. Johnson actually trained the Cobra actors you know Tommy, Bobby, Johnny, Jimmy separately. I mean they were together in the group but separately from John Crease. He taught John Crease completely separately as their sensei and kind of told him that he knows more than you but the Cobra's didn't know what he knew. He wanted the dynamic of you have your high level teacher then you've got the Cobra's students who don't know what he knows and you've got a completely different art over here with Miyagi and Daniel that had their own bond and dynamic. So I loved the way that Pat Johnson approached this film. Pat Johnson is also known for choreographing multiple films such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Mortal Kombat film. Now if we break this down a little bit let's look at Miyagi Doha Karate. And he doesn't really give much information other than it was taught to him by his father and it came from Okinawa. So an Okinawa kid too even further exemplifies this that Okinawa was the origin of his art. So we know that's a good starting point to begin with. Some sort of Okinawan karate, traditional Japanese. The bigger hint comes in karate kid part three when Miyagi is teaching Daniel Kata. If you ask a lot of martial arts practitioners of the art Goji Roo they will recognize the Kata they'll all tell you it's performed incorrectly and wrong in the wrong timing. It was modified for cinema but the moves are very similar. So if you look at Goji Roo origins Goji Roo is an Okinawan art. Okay starting to line up a little bit. Then let's look at the name Mr. Miyagi. Looking at Goji Roo if you trace it back to its grand master the guy who created it is Cho-jen Miyagi. So now we can kind of see the picture of where the inspiration of Mr. Miyagi came from. We have an Okinawan art with a Kata that's performed in the film albeit altered and Miyagi named after Cho-jen Miyagi. So we can conclude pretty confidently that Miyagi Do-Karate is Goji Roo or at least a Hollywood version of it. Johnny's a different story. In the karate kid films we see Daniel's training constantly. It's all about his instruction all about his level of discipline and his art but we never really learn anything about Kobukai. We don't see the classes being taught besides no mercy strike part strike first that's that's all we get. Now in the Kobukai TV show there's a lot more into that as we see Johnny training his students but even he himself doesn't go any further than to say it's old school karate. So what does Kobukai train in? What kind of martial art is it? Let's look at Johnny style in both the movies and the TV show he's very kick oriented. He's got lots of high kicks lots of fancy kicks especially in the tournament. That's very prevalent in the Korean arts Tanksudo, Taekwondo, they're very kick heavy. If we go into karate kid part three there's actually a scene where the the villain Terry Silver comes to Miyagi and Daniel's training and says he was a classmate and colleague of John Crease and he's here on behalf of his master from South Korea to give his apologies for John Crease's action. Okay so now we have the South Korea aspect which lines up with Taekwondo or Tanksudo. Let's take this even further. Pat Johnson as we talked about earlier choreographed the films he is a Tanksudo master. So now you put the pieces together. You got Terry Silver who mentions their sensei in South Korea. You've got the kick based arts and Johnny's techniques and then you've got the fact that Pat Johnson is a Tanksudo master. I think we can confidently conclude that Johnny and Kobukai train in Tanksudo or at least a variant of it. It's really interesting because you see a lot of debate online. A lot of fans theorize that it's Shodokan or Taekwondo and it's kind of funny because it gets really heated because you've got Shodokan practitioners saying nope I train in Shodokan this is definitely Shodokan. And people are like well no it's Taekwondo. Oh no but Taekwondo came from Shodokan. People well jump in. No it's Kyokushin karate so it's kind of funny to see people talking about it because it's never really stated in the film. But all we can do is take the pieces and kind of put it together and for fun what kind of art is it because as we grew up again karate just was karate but now we can kind of break levels down it's kind of a fun thing to examine. The reason we're not going to include the next karate kid and the karate kid remake in this list is because there's a lot of inconsistencies in the training and the martial art style and the fact that the karate kid remake is actually kung fu. So that can be a whole different discussion on its own. Now here's for a little bit of fun bit of trivia that crane kick. The crane kick is the most iconic thing. It's been immortalized by this film and the thing is it doesn't even exist. It's not a real karate technique. When they were working on the first film Pat Johnson was working with stunt coordinator famous martial artist known as Daryl Vidal. Really high ranking he's the 10th degree now I believe in Chinese Kempo karate. He helped with the stunts on the film. I think he was some of the stunt doubles as well if I'm not mistaken. Mr. Johnson went to Mr. Vidal and said he was looking for some sort of a cool unique technique to end the film with. So Vidal on spot just came up with the crane kick. Just something flashy, something fun but it's not based on any reality. And even fun fact too is you can see Daryl Vidal in the film. He is the opponent that Johnny defeats right before fighting Daniel and he's also Miyagi stunt double on the beach scene on the tree sump doing the crane kick where we see it for the first time. So what do you think? What kind of karate is in Cobra Kai? Do you agree that Gojiru and Tanksudo are the foundations at least for the arts of the films and the series? Tell me below if you agree or if you think I'm completely full of crap or if you think it's something else altogether. So don't forget to subscribe and share this video and thanks for watching. No mercy!