A scene from the first Karate Kid isn’t discussed nearly enough. Calm, leisurely, and a little amused, Mr. Miyagi enters a parking lot altercation involving five teenagers and effortlessly breaks them all up. There isn’t really a dramatic musical cue that does it justice. Before most people realize what happened, he’s finished. More than any tournament or crane kick, that scene subtly creates a foundation that the entire franchise has been building upon ever since.
Miyagi is the strongest person in the universe. When you say it aloud, it sounds clear. However, despite the fact that the Karate Kid fan base has been debating power rankings for years, YouTube channels have conducted in-depth analyzes, and Reddit threads have hundreds of comments, people continue to try to support someone else. In an interview conducted prior to the release of Season 4, Michael Schlossberg, the showrunner of Cobra Kai, directly confirmed that Miyagi is at the top of the roster. No, not Johnny Lawrence. Not Chozen. It’s not Terry Silver. Miyagi. Conversation comes to an end, but it never really does.
Miyagi never really tried, which is one of the reasons it’s so hard to rank him fairly. He wasn’t a traditional competitor. His karate wasn’t designed for spectacle or competitions. It originated in Okinawa, was passed down through his family’s generations, and was developed into something that appeared almost effortless from the outside. The one noteworthy instance of an opponent landing a blow—a piece of lumber in Karate Kid II, with his back to Daniel, defending him—says it all. If not, he was just untouchable.
The discussion becomes genuinely fascinating below Miyagi. The strongest candidate for second place is Chozen Toguchi. Fans were eager to see if decades of intense training in Okinawa had transformed the once-villain into something formidable going into Cobra Kai Season 5. The response was quite forceful. He entered Terry Silver’s dojo by himself and immediately defeated six instructors. Later, while a little inebriated, he engaged Silver in a death match that nearly brought him to a standstill. A totally sober and focused Chozen might easily defeat Silver. Even though the scoreboard didn’t fully reflect it, he won that fight on principle.
On any honest list, Terry Silver is uncomfortably high. After years away from karate, he returned more vicious and sharper than before. Midway through Season 5, he decisively defeated Daniel, and even his defeat in the finale had a catch: he was distracted, worn out from the Chozen fight, and not performing at his best. No one in the franchise wants to take on Silver when he’s at his best. In contrast to Miyagi-Do’s discipline, his style has an air of cruelty and cold efficiency.
Sentiment complicates Daniel LaRusso’s role in all of this. He is your favorite character, the one who wins the tournament with the crane kick, and the original protagonist. However, when compared to the other Cobra Kai masters, he comfortably occupies the middle tier. He is proficient, seasoned, occasionally brilliant in combat, and able to defeat nearly anyone when his back is to the wall. A more realistic picture is provided by the fact that he required Chozen’s assistance to defeat Kreese and that Silver was actually superior to him for the majority of Season 5.
Together, Kreese and Johnny Lawrence occupy an intriguing bracket: they are both dangerous, skilled, and able to defeat nearly anyone on any given day, but they also have obvious limitations. There is a version of Johnny that could advance with the correct training, and he has perhaps the best innate instincts in the franchise. Kreese, on the other hand, has spent decades frightening people not just with technique but also with reputation, which is a form of power in and of itself.
After the Sekai Taikai, Miguel Diaz and Tory Nichols both have strong claims to the top spot among the teenage fighters. Miguel in particular has always possessed a quality that goes beyond technical proficiency: a poise under duress that most fighters twice his age lack. In these discussions, Robby Keene is frequently disregarded, but his capacity to assimilate methods from various fields and use them under duress is subtly remarkable.
In the real world of Karate Kid, strength isn’t always the decisive element. Loyalty, fatigue, emotion, and distraction all have an impact on the result. Because he couldn’t bring himself to kill, Chozen almost lost. Daniel needs to beat people, even though he shouldn’t. Long after a simple ranking would have satisfied everyone, the franchise is still worth watching because of that tension.
However, the franchise has already provided you with a number one if you need one. It’s the quiet guy in California who waxes cars and fixes fences. It was always the case.
