 Hi everyone. Today I'm going to do a little bit of an impromptu episode and because for those of you who follow my channel for a little bit or even know me, understand that I am an avid karate kid and Cobra Kai fan. So I want to take this moment to kind of geek out a little bit, especially in honor of season two just coming out. Now, there's a lot of talk that goes around. It's been brought up in the show. It's been brought up in Pulp Culture about the Crank Kick and whether or not it was legal and if Daniel won that tournament fairly or not. So today I kind of want to go over that a little bit. It's a little bit of a fun discussion and I'm going to give my opinion. I'm going to break down my perceptions and I'm going to ask you guys what you think. There's basically two criteria that people use to judge the Crank Kick on its being legal or not. First is strikes to the face. That strikes to the face when not allowed. The second topic is excessive force. So we're going to address both of those. But the funny thing is to understand where this topic even came from, I don't know about you guys, but when I was growing up this was never a topic. You know, my friends and I never discussed whether or not Daniel won it for real or not. We all thought the Crank Kick was cool. It was some magical technique that he used to win. The first time I ever heard about Daniel being the bully or the Crank Kick not being a legal move was from an episode of How I Met Your Mother in which Barney is siding with the perspective of Johnny how Johnny is a real Karate Kid and in following that episode a video came out on YouTube on Daniel is a real bully. So I think from there that kind of spawned a discussion of the Crank Kick being legal or not. But there's something to understand when you're looking at the movies and the show. There is a perspective difference. The Karate Kid movies are from Daniel's perspective. He is the hero of that tale and it doesn't matter what Johnny says and reiterates. Johnny was the bully and the villain and the antagonist of that film. In Cobra Kai, Daniel is more the antagonist because now we're seeing the story from Johnny's point of view. This one is Johnny's tale. It's his perspective and if you look at both the movies and the show things are skewed a little bit to those perspectives. You know Daniel tells people he was run off a cliff where really it was a hill. But in Cobra Kai when Johnny is talking about his background with Daniel he leaves that part out. So in each person's head they're their own hero of their own story and I think it's important to understand that perspective. The Karate Kid is an underdog tale. Cobra Kai is a redemption story. Now going forward there will be some minor spoilers for Cobra Kai if you have not seen it yet. If you have not seen it yet I highly recommend it. YouTube premium. If you like the movies you will love the show. So I definitely recommend going to watch that. So there will be some minor spoilers. So my personal opinion and my thought. I feel the Crank Kick is legal and that Daniel won that tournament fair and square. And I based this on the rules and context that we were given to us in the first film. As far as the whole no strikes to the face rule, nowhere in the first film was that even mentioned. Okay that was not even a rule. That was brought up in movie number three. In the first Karate Kid when they show up at the tournament Daniel was asking Miyagi you know what are the rules here? And of course Miyagi doesn't know anything about tournaments. So as Daniel's freaking out, Allie says to him, she says Daniel, she goes everything above your waist is a point. You can hit the head, sternum, kidneys, ribs. You got it? Okay. That was the extent that we're given. Anything above the waist is a point. Now if you watch the tournament you will see plenty of facial contact. Okay Johnny kicks the guy in the face early in the tournament. Dutch kicks Daniel in the face. Remember sweep the leg? Johnny's kicking Daniel in the face. So if those facial strikes are allowed why isn't the crane kick? They never said facial contact was not allowed in the first film. That came up in the third film when Daniel's training with Terry Silver and he's teaching him the quick silver method. One of them was a punch to the face and Daniel says, well hit into the face I'll be disqualified. That's the first time that was mentioned but also in context that movie also mentioned there were new rules that year. One of them being the reigning champ only has to come back to fight with Final Match and the Final Match has a time limit, a two minute time limit and then after that it goes into sudden death. These are all new rules so it's logical to assume that there's no facial contact rule. Might have been one of the new rules but fast forward to Cobra Kai as we saw in the All-Valley tournament then facial contact was fully allowed and even Miguel scored a point with a crane kick. So perhaps movie three even just kind of experimented with the rules a little bit but clearly from the other movies and the show facial contact is allowed. Now there are some tournaments that allow facial contact from kicks but not from punches particularly Kyokushin is famous for that. So okay let's take that into consideration. That still makes the kick legal and yeah we don't see a whole lot of punches to the face except in Cobra Kai. Hawk delivers a punch to the face to score a point and even in the first cry to kid at one point Johnny does hit Daniel in the face the referee calls it the clash and doesn't award a point but he was not warned. So there's still no indication there to assume that only kicks were allowed to face not punches but even so that was still rendered a crane kick illegal move. Now another thing too speaking of disqualification in the tournament we saw Bobby Brown disqualified because he delivered a injury strike to Daniel's knee intentionally to put him out of commission he was disqualified immediately but I kind of want to bring up a point on that. That set a precedent for the tournament if you look at the sport reference say baseball if a pitcher hits a batter and is deemed intentional the umpire will come out and mourn both teams he doesn't want retaliation and it's to prevent anyone from getting hurt so if the other team were to retaliate that pitcher gets thrown out of the game immediately. I believe there should be a similar mindset here Cobra Kai showed an intent to injure Daniel. Bobby injured Daniel on purpose and he was disqualified right off the bat with no warning right then and there there should be a red flag on Cobra Kai so when Johnny dropped that elbow into Daniel's knee as to my opinion it should have been like baseball he should have been tossed right away there should have been a warning because there was already an established precedent there of Cobra Kai injuring their opponents on purpose and that was a very clear violation of that so if you feel anyone should be disqualified it should be Johnny and speaking of warnings I don't know about you guys but there were a lot of warnings issued out in the first and third moving of tournaments a lot of excessive force Johnny and Mike Barnes got away with a lot so if they were allowed to slide I think Daniel should allow be allowed to slide too because he played by their own rules he played by the same rules that Cobra Kai did actually a little bit more honorably so if anyone shouldn't be disqualified it should have been Cobra Kai multiple times not Daniel. Now then there's the concept of excessive force some people claim that the crane kick used excessive force and Daniel was too hard with it a little bit of a fuzzy area I can see the logic here but how do you determine excessive force especially in the context of the movies and shows if you feel that Daniel's force was too powerful what exactly did he do he did the jumping front kick that Johnny walked into how was it overly aggressive how was it excessive and you feel that that was excessive force then so as you see it's pretty rampant so if excessive force was the issue and everybody else got it passed Daniel should too now I'm going to say this full disclaimer I love Johnny I think his story is amazing I think he's the best character that we have right now because he's so interesting and so well-rounded but that being said I'm going to rile up team Cobra Kai fans a little bit if you notice Johnny only scores a point when going after Daniel's weakness in the first tournament in the first movie Daniel scores the first two points very easily Johnny on the other hand only scores a point when he sweeps the leg he sweeps the injured leg if you watch from that point on Johnny continuously goes after that leg he goes after sweeps he goes after strikes when he when Daniel gets him on the ground Johnny hits his knee flips back up Daniel throws a round kick Johnny sweeps his leg again he's always going after that leg so from that point on the only points Johnny scored was when he attacked that leg and it's funny because in Cobra Kai season two by Johnny's logic when he compared the three different cobras one that kills their crippled monkey or one that kills the strongest lion it appears that in the first movie Johnny was the cobra that kills the crippled monkey because that was the only way he was able to score a point he continuously targeted that weakness which was interesting to see in season two that he realizes that this is wrong and he's trying to reverse that so back again to the perspective and the and the fallen hero trying to redeem himself i think that's an interesting part of the analysis in my opinion so overall i mean yes it's just a movie it's just a tv show but like a lot of people out there these movies inspired me as a child to join the martial arts and they are a big part of my childhood so i find it fun to geek out ever now and then it's not your thing i understand we'll go back to regular episodes i just kind of wanted to have a little bit of a fun rant kind of something different a little bit of an analysis because season two just came out and it's one of my favorite movies and series of all time so just something to look at but i believe everything that's been presented to us the crane kick was legal Daniel won legitimately and if you feel there's any disqualifications that should have happened it should have been on Cobra Kai's side so in any scenario in my opinion Daniel wins the tournament and since we're talking about perspectives i also found it interesting if johnny felt so cheated then why at the end of the first tournament did he go and grab the trophy personally handed to Daniel and say you're right larusso good match he showed acknowledgement and respect and good sportsmanship but during season one of Cobra Kai the opening when we recapped the tournament it shows johnny laying there on the ground pounding the floor right in his defeat and now it's affected the rest of his life so why did the discrepancy why the change my personal opinion again comes out of perspective first movie was from daniel's perspective the show is from johnny's perspective so they each have their own slightly skewed viewpoints which i think is worth taking into consideration when looking at the debate of what was fair who was right who was wrong who was the bully if Cobra Kai has taught us everything everyone's the good guy and the bad guy so anyway if you're still watching thank you for geeking out with me um also keep a lookout we will be doing a third episode of what kind of karate is in Cobra Kai we're going to analyze some of the side characters this time around so just stay tuned for that but again thanks for watching if you guys like this video please subscribe i want to hear your opinions what your debates are about this topic so please leave them in the comment below thank you so much