The Surprising Origin Behind The Karate Kid And Cobra Kai

Kamen shared with Sports Illustrated that as a teenager, he'd been jumped by a gang of bullies and beaten up after a night at the 1964 New York World's Fair. With his pride bruised, he decided to take up karate for self-defense — but his first teacher turned out not to be a good fit. A former Marine captain, the man had an aggressive style focused on...well, striking first, striking hard, and having no mercy, and while his tutelage might have helped Kamen get back at his bullies, it left him feeling like he was missing a true connection to the art. 

After earning his first black belt, Kamen sought out a different style of karate, one more centered on defense — on turning an attacker's aggression toward them, with a smooth, fluid system of blocks complemented by surgical counter-strikes. The style of karate he would eventually come to master, an Okinawan style called Gōjū-ryū, was invented by a legendary sensei who created it by blending traditional Okinawan forms with elements of Chinese kung fu. This man would directly mentor Kamen's sensei, so it's pretty likely that Kamen heard his name many, many times over his years of training: Chōjun Miyagi.

Kamen explained to SI that his mentor in the film business, then-Columbia Pictures chairman Frank Price, had come to him with the germ of an idea for a story: a newspaper article, which had actually been optioned for a potential feature by Columbia, about a 9-year-old boy who had earned a black belt after being picked on in his neighborhood. In a subsequent conversation with the producer who had discovered the article, the legendary Jerry Weintraub, the seed which would grow into The Karate Kid began to germinate. "Jerry asked if I had a story to wrap around this [article]," Kamen remembered. "I came out to L.A. and told him about me and my own teacher. My life informed it."