Popverse's top stories of the day

• Harley Quinn is making April Fools Day 2025 one to remember with a not-so-sweet-smelling DC comic book special
• Watch the D&D, Warhammer, Mega Man, and more anthology panel Secret Level from Prime Video, filmed at NYCC 2024
• Nintendo's long-time Mario voice actor reveals the secret behind voicing Mario's Dad in the movie (and how it goes back to his original audition decades ago)

You can’t deny the legacy of The Karate Kid. The 1984 martial arts film is a coming-of-age classic, and has spawned numerous sequels, and the popular Cobra Kai television series. While The Karate Kid is considered a succ?tag=popverse07-20ess now, the actors had concerns during production of the film. For starters, they hated the title.

Speaking to a crowd at GalaxyCon Raleigh, William Zabka and Martin Kove recalled their initial concerns. “I remember correctly, we didn’t even like the title. We kept thinking it was like a Bruce Lee movie,” Kove said. “A Bruce Lee comedy is what Ralph [Macchio] used to think of it,” Zabka added. “Yeah, because Bruce Lee movies like Enter the Dragon were great,” Kove replied.

Kove then shared the story of how he became involved in the original film. “I was actually on a tv series called Cagney and Lacey, and this was just really another heavy. I was playing a lot of heavies. So, I did it, it was really interesting meeting Jerry Weintraub and John Avildsen. John is a big deal, because John Avildsen had directed Rocky, and now he was directing. But honestly, throughout the whole movie, we didn’t have a clue.”

According to Kove, Avildsen separated some of the actors in order to add authenticity to their interactions. “I didn’t get a chance to experience Cobra Kai in the movie, because John wanted to keep us separate,” Kove said. “I didn’t get a chance to be with Daniel or Pat Morita because he kept us away. He preferred that we did not mingle. The Cobra Kai always respected John Kreese but we never got a chance to really be friends during the movie.”

Zabka went on to say that he hadn’t even met Kove until they filmed their scenes together. “They introduced Marty as Kreese in the dojo. We had rehearsed all the fight scenes, we had months of rehearsal before we ever met the real John Kreese, so who trained us for the movie was Pat Johnson, and he played John Kreese in all the rehearsals. The day we were shooting in the dojo, the first time you see Kreese and Daniel walks into the dojo, that was the first day that we even met Marty, and he had a black belt on, and he pretty much came in as Kreese in character.”

“I never met Martin Kove, I met John Kreese,” Zabka continued. “He came in, and that’s how it was. And John Avildsen did, he encouraged us to stay apart. Even at the beginning of the movie, Ralph [Macchio] and I were getting along well, and he encouraged us not to hang out too much. He said, ‘You hang out with your Cobra Kais and get buddy-buddy with them. He didn’t want any buddy-buddyness to happen with Ralph, so we really were kind of separated. And he wanted what happened onscreen to be kind of organic, so next time we saw Ralph, we were chasing him in skeleton outfits, and he didn’t want us to hold back.”

Cobra Kai season 6 part 2 premieres November 15 on Netflix.

 How to watch all the Karate Kid & Cobra Kai TV series in order.