All 12 Tournaments In Karate Kid & Cobra Kai (& Who Won)

Summary

• Tournaments in the Karate Kid franchise showcase characters’ skills & enhance rivalries, impacting participants significantly.
• Winners of All Valley Tournaments from 1981 to 2019 are highlighted, emphasizing the intense competition and character growth.
• The franchise’s appeal lies in nail-biting action scenes with martial arts used to amplify themes of honor, discipline, and sportsmanship.

The Karate Kid movies and the Cobra Kai series have featured several professional karate fights, including the All Valley in Cobra Kai season 4. Although the Karate Kid franchise uses its martial arts action as a mere narrative device to nail down themes surrounding the power of honor, discipline, and comradeship in sports, its primary appeal comes from its slam-bang action scenes. From roundhouse kicks to Daniel LaRusso’s crane kick, the franchise features it all to keep viewers at the edge of their seats and immerse them into its overarching bad blood and rivalries.

As seen in the Karate Kid movies and the Cobra Kai series, the franchise’s characters do not necessarily need a professional stage to showcase these skills. Fights can break out anywhere from public swimming pools to school hallways. However, nothing raises the stakes for their karate fights more than a sanctioned tournament, where fighters and their respective dojos have a lot to lose. In its runtime of five movies and five seasons, the Karate Kid franchise has featured and subtly referenced several tournaments and their winners, highlighting how they impacted the participants.

12 All Valley Karate Tournament 1981

Winner: Darryl Vidal

The All Valley Tournament started in 1968, and there were plenty of winners and losers over the years, but when it comes to the Karate Kid franchise, the first one that matters happened in 1981. Hailing from the Locust Valley Karate Club, Darryl Vidal is the first known winner of the All Valley Karate Tournament. Long before the events of the first Karate Kid movie, Johnny Lawrence participated in the All Valley Tournament for the first time and lost to Darryl Vidal in the quarterfinals.

After defeating Cobra Kai’s Johnny Lawrence, Vidal won the tournament, holding the title of 1981’s All Valley Karate Tournament champion. This was a tough loss since Cobra Kai had won the tournament four times between 1975 (its first year to compete in it) and 1983. This means that the dojo was harder on young Johnny and forced him to step up his game in the next two years’ competitions to make up for the loss in 1981.

11 All Valley Karate Tournament 1982

Winner: Johnny Lawrence

Although Johnny Lawrence lost his first tournament against Vidal, he showed enough heart against the champion to prove his potential to win. As a result, John Kreese started focusing more on Johnny and his training to ensure that he was stronger in the next year’s tournament. Johnny Lawrence and John Kreese’s hard work paid off well when Lawrence finally won the All Valley Karate Tournament in 1982, a year before the events of the first Karate Kid movie.

Not much is known about the tournament or how Johnny won. However, it was his road to this point in his life that matters. Johnny’s mother Laura had married a TV producer named Sid and he was abusive to Laura and Johnny. Since Johnny didn’t have any friends and was often bullied, he sought out someone and found Kreese, who began training him and turned Johnny into a championship fighter, helping him break the walls his stepdad had forced around him.

10 All Valley Karate Tournament 1983

Winner: Johnny Lawrence

In the 1983 All Valley Karate Tournament, Johnny Lawrence defended his title while facing Cobra Kai’s Tommy in the finals. Although Tommy put up a tough fight, Lawrence beat him fair and square, winning the All-Valley champion title two times in a row. Johnny Lawrence created history with his monumental win, cementing his place as a young karate protégé. Even though he beat his fellow Cobra Kai student, they remained friends and started the group that terrorized other kids at school.

One thing that’s interesting about the Karate Kid franchise is that it mostly ignored this incredible accomplishment for Johnny. More than once, people said that Daniel LaRusso was the only two-time All Valley Karate Champion, which was a lie. Luckily, Cobra Kai rectified this by publicly acknowledging for the first time that Johnny was a two-time champion before Daniel did it and he was just as accomplished in the tournament, even though most people forgot about him.

9 All Valley Karate Tournament 1984

Winner: Daniel LaRusso

As shown in the events of the first Karate Kid movie, Daniel LaRusso entered the All Valley Karate Tournament in 1984 as the only competitor from Mr. Miyagi’s Miyagi Do. With Mr. Miyagi’s unconventional defensive karate style at his disposal, Daniel LaRusso gradually made it to the All Valley finals even though the opposing Cobra Kai dojo used every means necessary to bring him down.

Even in the finals, Johnny Lawrence tried injuring him on John Kreese’s command to win the tournament, by taking out his leg. However, with his signature crane kick to the face, Daniel LaRusso overpowered Johnny, breaking the Cobra Kai champion’s winning streak. LaRusso won the fight cleanly, but Kreese was a poor sport and came after the high school student, only for Mr. Miyagi to step up and defend his star pupil. This also led to LaRusso accomplishing something special as it was his first of two All Valley wins.

8 All Valley Karate Tournament 1985

Winner: Daniel LaRusso

The 1985 All Valley Karate Tournament’s new rules allowed the defending champion, Daniel, to skip all qualifiers and go straight to the finals. Owing to this new rule, Daniel LaRusso directly faced Cobra Kai’s Mike Barnes. With new villain Terry Silver as his co-Sensei, Mike initially led the fight by continuously winning points. However, to get revenge against Daniel and Mr. Miyagi for their 1984 win, Silver asked Barnes to commit an illegal move to injure Daniel.

With what followed, Mike lost a point, but Daniel got severely injured. However, just like his 1984 bout with Johnny, Daniel turned the fight’s outcome by pulling off a surprise kata technique and winning the All-Valley for the second time. This happened in the sudden death round, and two things happened as a result, Daniel became a local hero with his second straight win and the All Valley Tournament banned all Cobra Kai fighters from future competitions for their dirty play.

7 All Valley Karate Tournament 2017

Winner: Xander Stone

Although Cobra Kai season 1’s All Valley Karate Tournament ensues in 2018, it establishes that a fighter named Xander Stone is the defending champion from 2017. There is nothing known about the 2017 tournament other than the fact that Xander won it. Cobra Kai was not involved in the tournament that year, though, as it had received a lifetime ban after the actions of John Kreese and Terry Silver at the 1985 All Valley Karate Tournament.

However, Johnny Lawrence got the dojo reinstated in time for the next year. Representing the Topanga Karate dojo, Xander makes it to the semi-finals of the 2018 All Valley Karate Tournament. He also takes the spotlight before his semifinal fight with Miguel by preaching about ending racism and violence from the world. However, he fails to defend his title when Miguel beats him to move on to the finals of 2018’s All Valley Karate Tournament.

6 All Valley Karate Tournament 2018

Winner: Miguel Diaz

While Miguel defeated Xander Stone to reach 2018’s All Valley Karate Tournament final while Robby beat Hawk to get there. In the finals, Miguel and Robby fight toe to toe, but Robby struggles to keep up because of his shoulder injury from his previous fight with Hawk. Towards the end of the bout, Miguel implements Johnny Lawrence’s methods and shows no mercy towards Robby to win 2018’s All Valley Karate Tournament.

This was a disappointing moment for the series, as Johnny Lawrence seemed to be progressing into a better person than John Kreese was, and a better man than he believed he would ever be after his rough past. However, he taught the same lessons that Kreese taught him and that is when he realized that he might need to reign things back in if he wants to really help these young fighters become great. This also led Johnny against Daniel again, since LaRusso saw the dirty cheap shots and wanted to stop them.

5 All Valley Karate Tournament 2019 Skills Competition

Winner: Cobra Kai

After initially getting canceled, the All Valley Tournament returns in 2019 when Miguel and Samantha make a convincing appeal to the tournament’s board. This time around, the tournament introduces a separate division for boys and girls and also a skill demonstration competition for the dojos. While Miyagi Do and Eagle Fang feature impressive skills in their respective displays, they make a few unforced errors. They had first and second place midway through, but fell quickly.

Meanwhile, Cobra Kai reigns supreme with its flawless display of skills and strength, allowing the Dojo to win 2019’s All Valley Karate Tournament’s Skills Competition. These events were shown in the final two episodes of Cobra Kai season 4. By the time the skills competition ended, Cobra Kai took first while Miyagi-Do took second, and Eagle Fang fell all the way to sixth place.

4 All Valley Karate Tournament 2019 Girls Division

Winner: Tory Nichols

There were fighters from seven different dojos and institutes in the 2019 girls’ division. Samantha LaRusso easily made it to the quarterfinals while Tory Nichols and Piper Elswith made it to the quarterfinals as well. Tory beat Devon Lee (from Eagle Fang) and Samantha beat Piper Elswith. By the time the finals rolled around, it was Tory and Sam facing each other in the girls’ division of 2019’s All Valley Karate Tournament.

After Sam wins the first two rounds, Tory takes the lead by winning both rounds 2 and 3. Following Daniel’s advice, Sam implements the techniques of Miyagi Do and Eagle Fang to equalize the score in round 5. However, Tory starts leading again in round 6 after hitting Sam with an illegal eye kick. After bribing the referee, Terry Silver asks Tory to target Sam again and hit her other eye. Instead, Tory chooses to earn a fair win by beating Sam in round 7.

3 All Valley Karate Tournament 2019 Boys Division

Winner: Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz

Robby makes it to the All Valley Karate Tournament final in 2019 after beating Demetri in the semi-final. Meanwhile, Eli automatically qualifies for the finals after his opponent, Miguel, gets injured and walks out of the tournament when he realizes he is too hurt to continue on, causing Eagle Fang to lose its last fighter in the tournament. In a scintillating final, Robby and Eli use their experiences from both Miyagi Do and Cobra Kai dojos to overpower one another.

Robby seems incredibly close to winning before he gets distracted by Kenny, which allows Eli to recover. Towards the end of the fight in Cobra Kai season 4, Hawk lands a perfect kick to win the final round and become the new All Valley Karate Tournament champion. This happened in Sudden Death (similar to how Daniel beat Mike Barnes in 1985) and gave the win to Miyagi-Do, although the loss in the girls’ division cost them the tournament despite this great win.

2 All Valley Karate Tournament 2019 Grand Champion Trophy

Winner: Cobra Kai

Miyagi Do wins the boys’ division of 2019’s All Valley Karate Tournament but the winning title in the girls’ division and the skills competition goes to Cobra Kai, making them the Grand Champions of the tournament. In its aftermath, Terry Silver leverages Cobra Kai’s All Valley win to expand the dojo’s reign in the Valley in Cobra Kai season 5.

There were several problems here though. For one thing, Terry Silver bribed and paid off the referee in the girl’s finals, something that Tory saw after the fact, causing her to regret her win and feel that it wasn’t done fair and square. The biggest problem came after the tournament when the win forced both Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang to shut down based on the agreement beforehand. Cobra Kai then expanded and opened various locations while Daniel sought out Chozen Toguchi to help him battle Silver.

1 Kung Fu Tournament In 2010’s The Karate Kid

Winner: Dre Parker

Although The Karate Kid (2010) is not canon in Cobra Kai, it is still a part of the Karate Kid franchise. The movie features a Daniel LaRusso equivalent, Dre Parker (played by Jaden Smith), who trains under Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han to fight in a Kung Fu Tournament against Master Li’s students at Fighting Dragons Studio.

Like Daniel LaRusso from the original Karate Kid movie and Robby and Miguel from Cobra Kai, Parker learns his Sensei’s unconventional methods of training kung fu and ultimately implements them in the tournament to become a young kung fu champion. Interestingly, Ralph Macchio is heading to a new Karate Kid movie and while it won’t include Dre, it will include Daniel LaRusso working with Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han from the movie with Dre, proving that both movies exist in the same world.