Cobra Kai Belt Ranks | ART OF ONE DOJO

So regarding the first Karate Kid film, I get messages all the time from people complaining that Daniel LaRusso should not have been wearing a black belt at the end of the first film, especially after such a short amount of training. Now, if that's what you believe, then I have to ask you this. What the heck is up with the Cobra Kai belt ranking system? As I'm filming this episode, Cobra Kai Season 5 is just around the corner, so we're going to see just how well this episode ages. But if you have not seen Cobra Kai, I cannot recommend it enough. If you are a fan of the original Karate Kid films, then you should be a fan of the show, and I'm giving you this as a heads up, so there might be some potential minor spoiler warnings in this. So proceed with caution. If you haven't seen it, pause it, go watch it, come back, and let's talk. Okay, so regarding Daniel being a black belt in the tournament in the first film, let's look at the timeline. So basically, the film starts in September when Daniel moves from New Jersey to California, and it's the beginning of the school year. The tournament takes place December 19th that year, 1984. So basically, the whole first film takes place over the course of about six months. Now, Daniel gets beat up on Halloween, that's when Miyagi saves him, so really he has November and most or maybe half of December to train. So a month and a half. You might be asking, why is Daniel a black belt at a month and a half of training? That is a fair question. The movie does attempt to answer that by saying that only participants, only students who are brown belts and above may compete in that division. So that's when you see Miyagi kind of steal the black belt and get it to Daniel. It's for show, it's a means to an end, it gets him into the tournament. I don't necessarily agree with it. Personally, I don't think Daniel was a black belt level at that point, because he only had a few moves, he knew them well, he used them well, but if you watched his first tournament, he only really uses basically the front kick, round kick, and a couple different variety of punches. So Daniel's repertoire of techniques is very, very, very narrow, and for anyone who studied Goju-Ryu karate or any like real karate system, looks at him and realizes he is not a black belt in any curriculum. Fair enough. But to be equally as fair, Johnny did the exact same thing in Cobra Kai season one, when all of his students showed up at the All Valley, he gave them all black belts. So I have to presume it's for the same thing, it's just for show so they can compete in the division. Now the difference though is, you look at a character like Miguel, he'd been training with Johnny for a month. So okay, I can believably put aside my disbelief for a student who has been training for several months, probably like six, seven, eight months, but he trained every day constantly. So yes, you're going to see massive improvement to the point he could probably hold his own in a tournament. But there's a lot of students who showed up last minute and they were still doing flips and spin kicks and fancy stuff that most students aren't going to learn after a month of classes or less. So if you have a problem with Daniel being the black belt in the tournament, then I hope you've got the same qualms about Johnny's students being the black belt in the first season of Cobra Kai. Now you can also argue that, well you know that's just for show, it's just to get him into the tournament. Fine, I'll accept that. Except at the beginning of season two, when Johnny is mad about how they played dirty or how they fought dirty, he goes and he goes, okay you're gonna put you all back to white belt again. So he treats it like a rank, so everyone in the school is back down to a white belt. So that says to me that, did he actually promote them the black belt or was it just for show? Knowing Johnny, he could think all of his students are badasses and black belts right off the bat. So right away things are already starting to get a And in fact, the strange thing is, throughout the course of the entire show, up to this point, you know, based on four seasons, there's only ever been white belts or black belts in the Cobra Kai dojo. Which is kind of strange for a dojo that is so heavily commercialized. Like you would almost expect them to be a belt factory because it's all about collecting money and the business side of it, but you know, you don't see any belt rings happening. Miyagi don't make sense. You know, Mr. Miyagi was about the belts and heck, Daniel's students don't even wear uniforms. So I can see them not having the belt ranking system, but just from white belt to black belt in Cobra Kai is a little bit weird, especially in the Western American commercialized market. Now in the first film, we do see a little bit of variation in belt coloring. Now when Mr. Miyagi and Daniel show up to the Cobra Kai dojo to confront, you know, crease about the five against one, we do see that there are a couple of green belts and a couple of brown belts in the classroom. So we can actually assume that, okay, there is some sort of, even if rudimentary, belt ranking system in place. Although the weird thing is when they line up, they don't line up by rank, which is highly unusual, but when he tells them to fall in, they all seem to have their very designated spots in class. So I'm really curious how they are supposed to line up if not by rank. And speaking about five against one, we're going to return to that because truth of the matter is it's really four versus one, but we'll get back to that. And also speaking of weird structures, and this carries over the Cobra Kai as well, there's only teenage students. I mean, most commercialized schools have kids, teens, and adults. We've never seen a kid's class and we've never seen an adult's class. And it even comes to a point of awkwardness in season two when Stingray shows up, he wants to join Cobra Kai, but they look at him like he's really weird because, hey, you know, this is a class full of teenagers and he's an adult. But I have never personally known a martial arts school that will teach only high school age. You either have kids, teens, and adults, or teens and adults, or just adults. But I've never seen just that middle group. And to the point where it's scrutinized that an adult wants to take the class, it's very unusual. I've never seen a school like that. And the other question too is, is there only one teens class? Because if you're eliminating other classes, most schools are open multiple hours a day. Is it just one teens class? Kind of hard to base a business model off that. Unless there's multiple teens classes by rank, that's possible. We didn't see a class full of white, orange, or any of the earlier belts in the first film. So maybe he does have a beginning, advanced, whatever. We don't know. I just thought that was strange that there's only teenagers taking classes at Cobra Kai. So, okay, so what we have so far is what we have physically seen on screen, or in the Cobra Kai show, we've got white belts and black belts. In the movies, we saw green, brown, and black belts. Now, in Cobra Kai season two, when Stingray is in an interview for, I guess, security at the high school, he does mention that he's hoping to get his yellow belt soon. So we can assume that there maybe is a yellow belt. And also weird about the Cobra Kai belt ranking system is that, yeah, okay, so Johnny put it back to white belts in season two, and by the end of season four, there's still white belts except for at the tournament. But, you know, we're talking about like, what, a year at this point between tournaments, and they've been white belts the entire time, including students like Miguel or even Tori, who's been there for the entire year. No one in the class has ranked. Granted, students have come and gone, but no one has ranked in that year. Highly unusual. So I guess what we can deduce from any sort of a belt ranking system is, well, if we go by what we've seen on screen and what characters have said, we have white belts and green belts and brown belts and yellow belts and black belts. And so to put it in any sort of an order, well, white belt is typically first, and yellow belt is pretty much second, especially if Stingray was a white belt saying he was looking forward to getting his yellow belt soon. So we can assume white and yellow. When it comes to green and brown, I have personally seen a school not have brown before a black belt. Like, brown belt's almost always the belt before a black belt. So I think the natural we can assume is white, yellow, green, brown, black. Okay, starting to sound a little bit more natural, although, you know, based off Cobra Kai, it seems like it's white, white, white, white, white, yellow, green, brown, and black. So, I don't know. That's the best that I can come up with. I'm kind of curious if anyone else has any theories about belt systems. But let's return back to us talking about the four versus one Cobras. You know, we think of the Cobras, the bullies, the core group as five Cobras, but it's really four of them that pick on Daniel, not really the five. And I know some of you will be like, oh, well, Bobby just tried to stand up for him. I'm not talking about Bobby. I'm talking about Jimmy. He's the one, you know, who's just kind of there. Jimmy is with Johnny's group, but he doesn't really do anything in the film. You know, Tommy, Bobby, Johnny, and Dutch all have some sort of a prominent role, and they've all laid hands on Daniel at some point in the first film. Jimmy doesn't. Jimmy just kind of stands around. He only has a couple of lines, and they're off screen, so you don't even see him talk. He doesn't actually touch Daniel or pick on Daniel at any point during the fights in the film, and we don't even see him fighting in the tournament. And for those of you with a keen eye, if you look closely, you might notice that Jimmy is not even a black belt. He's a brown belt in the first movie. So, you kind of have the four Cobras plus Jimmy. Poor Jimmy. And in addition to him, we've got Jerry Robinson, who seems to really want to be part of the group. He's always saying hi. He's trying to hang out with them. They're always preoccupied with Daniel and his shenanigans, apparently, but he just doesn't seem to get any respect. And he's a green belt, but in the tournament, he is now promoted to brown belt. So, perhaps that's Kreese's way of saying, hey, look, I got for my students to compete. They've got to be brown belts or above. So, even Jerry got a promotion, but Jimmy did not. And we know that the school shut down, and those Cobras left after the events of the first film. So, poor Jimmy. Just doesn't get any respect. But it was good seeing him in season two, where he kind of redeemed himself in my eyes. So, as I'm making this episode, I am wondering if season five is going to completely come and undo everything I said. I've only seen the trailer so far, and the interesting thing about that, though, is in the trailer, everyone's a black belt. Every single student they show in Cobra Kai is a black belt. So, did they finally get their promotion and their recognition, or is this another marketing ploy? Who knows? Like I said, we'll see how well this episode ages after season five comes out. This might be a complete waste of time, but I appreciate you all attending my TED Talk. Now, if you appreciated this rant, I want you to check out this video right here, in which I show you a major timeline error that the Cobra Kai show made, and what it really should be. So, check that one out, and come on back and let me know what you guys think of Cobra Kai season five.