The 10 Best Fight Scenes In Cobra Kai, Ranked

Spoilers ahead for all of “Cobra Kai.”

Netflix’s “Cobra Kai” Season 6 Part 3 has come to a characteristically hard-hitting close, with climactic fights and even literal explosions making sure that viewers get their fill of hand-to-hand combat. Throughout the popular “The Karate Kid” sequel show’s duration, fans have been treated to an amazing collection of fights that range from borderline comical to performatively acrobatic and even deathly serious. With the series’ end finally at hand, it’s high time to look at the best and most high-kicking martial arts performances across the show’s six seasons.

Since every season of “Cobra Kai” features so very many fights, there’s a chance that some of your favorites will be absent from the following list. Still, while it’s by no means an objective rundown (art, after all, is subjective), this ranking of the finest clashes in “Cobra Kai” honors some of the greatest moments of the delightfully punchy series.

In all honesty, the reformed John Kreese’s (Martin Kove) last stand against his friend-turned-foe Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) can’t really be counted as a karate battle. Still, as the most uniquely 1980s-coded fight in the history of “Cobra Kai,” its place on the list is more than warranted.

The yacht battle between the two aging villains in the penultimate episode of “Cobra Kai” Season 6 Part 3, “Strike Last,” largely throws away the show’s usual fight aesthetic in favor of a clumsy and desperate fight to the death. Broken bottles, haymakers, uppercuts, and sneak attacks feature far more than acrobatic special techniques, and the entire thing is choreographed like an old-school action movie showdown instead of a martial arts scene. We even see the obligatory moment where the bad guy (Silver, in this case) is strangling the (comparative) protagonist as he desperately tries to reach a foreign object to save himself. The fight ends true to form: As Terry notices that Kreese is about to toss his cigar into a pool of gasoline, he lets out a wonderfully cheesy “No!” scream, which Kreese continues with an equally well-executed action hero one-liner: “… Mercy.” Cue massive explosion.

Rest now, Sensei Kreese and Sensei Silver. You lived your lives as legendary 1980s villains, and you sure went out like ones too.

The “Cobra Kai” Season 6 Part 2 finale, titled “Eunjangdo,” is easily one of the most impactful episodes of the show. A large part of this comes from the lengthy, all-out brawl between every single trainer and contestant in Barcelona’s Sekai Taikai tournament. The tensions that have been boiling ever since the teams first landed in the Catalan city come to a head after Gunther (Carsten Norgaard) disqualifies the Russian Tiger Strike dojo for performance-enhancing drugs. This allows the already defeated Miyagi-Do back in the game, and ends up contributing to the most violent scene in the show’s history.

As Axel Kovačević (Patrick Luwis) and Robby Keene (Tanner Buchanan) fight for semifinal supremacy, a watching Kwon Jae-Sung (Brandon H. Lee) sneaks in an illegal little blow and a mini-brawl threatens to break out. Gunther attempts to calm things down, but is promptly knocked out by the vengeful Tiger Strike sensei, Ivanov (Joshua Lamboy). This finally causes the karate kettle to boil over, and a no-holds-barred battle begins.

The Sekai Taikai brawl has too many awesome sequences and moves to count. From Sensei Wolf (Lewis Tan) easily holding his own against both Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) to Robby briefly holding the fort against the entire Cobra Kai dojo, every second is filled to the brim with amazing moments. Unfortunately, things take a dark turn as John Kreese loses the episode’s titular eunjangdo blade while he heads toward a small but intense side fight with Terry Silver. His student Kwon eventually finds the knife and tries to use it against Axel … only to miss his moment and fall on the eunjangdo himself, thus becoming the first karate fatality of the show’s contemporary timeline while everyone stares in stunned shock.

The rivalry between Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso’s first students — Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña) and Robby Keene, respectively — often serves as an expy of their senseis’ decades-long animosity. Since Johnny is a father figure to Miguel and Robby is his biological son, this puts him in a serious pickle more than once — and come “Cobra Kai” Season 5, Episode 5, “Extreme Measures,” he finally decides to do something about the situation. Johnny being Johnny, his solution involves the two beating the snot out of each other.

After Johnny sneakily sets up a meeting between the two young enemies in his apartment, he orders them to settle their differences. What follows is a solid grudge match that sneaks in several signature attacks from the pair’s previous fights and eventually spreads out into the stairwell and the second floor balcony. Robby and Miguel become increasingly violent as the fight begins referencing their fateful Season 2 school brawl (more on that later) that ended with Robby kicking Miguel over a railing, causing him to break his back. Ultimately, Miguel gains the upper hand and has a chance to return the favor to Robby — but at the last minute, both boys simply stop fighting, realizing how futile it is to keep throwing hands. Instead, they talk things out and defuse the situation.

This is a key moment in both characters’ narratives. From this point on, they become best friends (and eventually stepbrothers) who are always ready to support each other. “Cobra Kai” fight scenes are invariably at their best when the action tells a story, and this one finally closes the book on one of the most prominent rivalries on the show … like a badass, of course.

At times, “Cobra Kai” Season 4 comes dangerously close to suffering from sequelitis. The younger generation has gone through endless variations of their assorted feuds and teenage drama, and their power levels are so established that it’s easy to assume that the results of any given tournament are going to be divided between Tory Nichols (Peyton List), Samantha LaRusso (Mary Mouser), Miguel Diaz, and Robby Keene.

Perhaps this is why the boys’ All Valley Tournament finale between Cobra Kai’s Robby and Miyagi-Do’s Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz (Jacob Bertrand) in the season finale, “The Rise,” is so surprising. For much of the show, Eli has been playing the starter villain role — an acrobatic and arrogant fighter who nevertheless gets mowed down whenever he faces a character of narratively equal or superior importance. This time, however, he’s dropped the cruel, hyper-macho Hawk persona he created during his Cobra Kai days and becomes the best he’s ever been.

The fight is set up as yet another major “L” for Eli, who only reaches the final because Miguel isn’t available while Robby is more dangerous than ever. In practice, however, we get an impressive, evenly matched (and, for some reason, largely shirtless) contest where Eli utilizes an unforeseen combination of techniques from Miyagi-Do, Cobra Kai, and Eagle Fang to dismantle a frustrated and distracted Robby. With determination, skill, and intelligent fighting strategy, Eli overcomes the odds to win the match and the All Valley Tournament. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, the fight inspires Daniel and Johnny to join forces as a hybrid dojo that can train their students against Terry Silver’s brand of Cobra Kai karate. Talk about a major impact.

This is the one viewers were hoping to see since John Kreese turned up at the end of “Cobra Kai” Season 1. We already got a sample of John Kreese vs. Johnny Lawrence in the Season 2 opener, “Mercy Part II,” but this time the villain faces off against both Johnny and Daniel LaRusso in the span of the same extended fight. There were many ways this could have fallen flat. While Martin Kove is a reliable scene-stealer who’s able to radiate pure villainy from every pore of his scowling face, he’s also in his 70s, and at this point we’ve only seen him do some fairly bare-bones stuff. How can the elderly Kreese possibly do against both a furious version of his favorite wayward student and his greatest living enemy?

Pretty well, as “Cobra Kai” Season 3, Episode 10, “December 19,” proves. The help of careful choreography, stunts, and camera work enables the surprisingly spry Kove to deliver the kind of intense action that fans hoped for from Kreese. The Johnny part of the fight starts over nothing less than Johnny’s son Robby Keene’s soul, and before long, Daniel takes over the fight from Johnny, gets thrown through the iconic Cobra Kai mall dojo’s window, and almost gets stabbed with a shard of glass before winning the day with his newly-acquired pressure points technique.

Though Kreese technically loses, he’s far from a write-off here. The scene proves once and for all that the old Cobra Kai sensei is a full-time menace who has no qualms about committing bloody murder if it wins him the fight … and drags both Johnny and Daniel deeper down in the karate purgatory by suggesting they might be willing to do the same. No mercy, indeed.

The “Cobra Kai” Season 5 finale, “Head of the Snake,” is my personal pick for the entire show’s best fight episode. It somehow crams a lengthy karate invasion of Silver’s mansion, an impressive three-dojo brawl, and a tense one-on-one fight between Silver and Daniel LaRusso into an action-packed climax that befits the excellent season — but still, a single fight manages to rise above the rest. As Johnny, Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan), and Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto) storm Silver’s place to settle some scores, Mike is soon knocked out and Johnny has to face a group of dangerous Cobra Kai senseis alone. His brutal struggle for life before Mike’s last-minute cavalry charge is a real nail-biter, but the big confrontation happens elsewhere as Chozen and Silver settle a few scores.

Chozen and Silver are among the most formidable fighters in the series, and the pair’s slow, deliberate battle tells a story like few others. Both men get some brutal early blows in, with Chozen emerging as a victor of the hand-to-hand part of the fight thanks to his tactical deployment of the pressure point technique on Silver’s leg. Silver then grabs a katana, but Chozen counters with his trusty pair of sai. After a well-paced and extremely tense weapon combat sequence, Chozen finally has Terry at his mercy.

However, despite the proverbial points clearly going to the Okinawan master, the actual fight goes to Terry. Distracted by the sounds inside the mansion, Chozen glances elsewhere, and the downed Terry manages to slash him across the back with his sword. Fortunately, we eventually discover that Chozen lives to fight another day.

This is the fight “Cobra Kai” has been building up to all along, made all the better by the fact that it focuses solely on the show’s true hero. Threatening as the Iron Dragons’ Sensei Wolf may be, he’s not as much a character here as he is the physical representation of the show’s ultimate antagonist: Johnny’s deep-set insecurities. Wolf even briefly plays the embodiment of Johnny’s darker thoughts when the pair inexplicably find themselves in the same empty locker room pre-fight.

In the “Cobra Kai” Season 6 finale, “Ex-Degenerate,” the show cleverly puts Johnny in the same role Daniel plays in “The Karate Kid” — a comparatively weak fighter who has to face a powerful, well-trained karate bully who’s out to get him. Additionally, Daniel himself gets to play the Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) role as Johnny’s ringside sensei, and the fight pays liberal homage to the 1984 “Karate Kid” movie’s iconic All Valley Tournament final.

This stylistic callback means that the three-point match for the Sekai Taikai team championship doesn’t necessarily feature the show’s finest choreography, but that’s fine because the actual battle being fought here is “Johnny now vs. the man he used to be.” As such, it’s fitting that instead of a fancy special move, Johnny ultimately wins his most important match by learning from his most traumatic one. Here, he doesn’t charge right into Wolf’s Shaolin Sunset technique like he once did with Daniel’s Crane Kick. Instead, he switches styles and lures the opponent in, countering the dangerous kick with a sweep and going for the endgame. The fight is the culmination point of six seasons of character growth and gets its message across so well that even the otherwise irredeemable Wolf can’t help but show respect.

The girls’ finale in the “Cobra Kai” Season 6 episode “Strike Last” delivers some of the most impressive fight choreography in the show’s history, as well as a happy ending to its saddest underdog story. Outside the dojo, Tory Nichols is the show’s resident punching bag. She deals with poverty, loss, and deep-set intimacy issues. She’s manipulated by villainous senseis and takes so many hard knocks that Peyton List’s expression of barely hidden pain is one of the most recognizable visuals of the series. What’s more, her opponent Zara Malik (Rayna Vallandingham) has been taunting her any which way she can — including an extremely spirited attempt to drive a wedge between Tory and Robby Keene in Barcelona.

Viewers have watched Tory take hits and lash out in anguish for so long that this finale is more than a fight — it provides closure to years of torment. First, her former nemesis Samantha LaRusso helps her train and even withdraws from their semi-final match to let her advance, surprising Tory with this unprecedented and selfless show of support. Then, after a solid first-round beating from Zara, a brief but loving heart-to-heart with Robby further reinforces Tory’s trust in her support network and allows her to concentrate on the task at hand.

What follows is the greatest comeback in the show’s history. Vallandingham is a real-life martial arts prodigy whose skills are on full display, and List and the makers of the show infuse Tory with unprecedented calm and nimbleness. In an almost jubilant combination of solid defense and eye-popping offense, Tory dismantles Zara, ending the fight in a vicious manner that wins her both the Sekai Taikai championship and a lucrative career in competitive karate. A happy ending has never kicked quite this hard.

Understandably given their history, Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence are on a collision course for much of “Cobra Kai.” The show makes the most of this animosity by delaying the inevitable fight as long as it can, and their true “The Karate Kid”-style rematch for three points doesn’t take place until the appropriately-titled “Cobra Kai” Season 4, Episode 5, “Match Point.”

The expectations are sky high, and fortunately, the scene delivers. The pair’s fragile alliance is in tatters as they disagree over their teaching methods, so they decide to face off over dojo leadership. It’s clear from the get-go how big this moment is. Everyone involved — Daniel and Johnny very much included — seem excited and mildly nervous. The two fighters respect each other, their movements careful and deliberate. As expected, Johnny is on the offensive and Daniel relies on counter-fighting, but the latter soon switches stances and deploys the Miyagi Pressure Points technique Chozen taught him.

The match is extremely even and ends in a hilarious draw when both senseis simultaneously knock each other out. Surprisingly, Daniel emerges as the dirtier fighter of the pair, as he temporarily paralyzes Johnny’s left arm with the pressure points and forces him to adapt on the fly. Sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize some interesting foreshadowing here. Johnny’s 2-2 takedown-heel stomp combo is surprisingly similar to the move Eli later uses to win his championship, and the spinning backfist he liberally spams (and ultimately uses to knock Daniel out) is the very same technique he uses in the series finale to score his decisive point against Sensei Wolf. The stealthy implication here is that if a move is good enough to land a hit on Daniel LaRusso, it’s good enough to become a champion.

Just like the “Karate Kid” movies, a lot of “Cobra Kai” is based on petty nonsense, misunderstandings, and childish love triangles that somehow keep escalating into broken bones and blood vendettas. No other fight scene on the show embodies this basic tenet as well as the Season 2 school brawl, aka the Fight at West Valley High School.

The massive all-out brawl between Miyagi-Do, Cobra Kai, and just about everyone else on the premises starts when Tory Nichols challenges the show’s resident drama magnet Samantha LaRusso to a fight after the latter kissed Tory’s boyfriend at the moment, Miguel Diaz. A succession of unfortunate misunderstandings causes Miguel and Robby Keene to get in on the action as well. Before anyone knows it, two seasons of lingering tensions explode in brutal chaos with everyone kicking everyone. No one is safe — the end result of the terrible battle leaves Sam literally scarred and paralyzes Miguel.

The school fight’s excellent, hectic choreography utilizes the mundane environment on a building-wide scale, and despite multiple attempts, the show never manages to recapture this lightning in the brawl bottle. Plot-wise, it’s arguably the show’s most pivotal moment and its fallout affects many characters’ lives for seasons to come. Before the school brawl, “Cobra Kai” is essentially a fun little throwback series about two middle-aged dudes who train a bunch of kids to settle their decades-old karate issues. For better or for worse, it’s a whole different show after Season 2, Episode 10, “No Mercy.”

“Cobra Kai” is streaming on Netflix.