Cobra Kai never dies, but unfortunately the actors that paved the way for the legend can’t say the same as sadly, Rob Garrison, one of the original Cobra’s, passed away recently. If you don’t remember him it might mean that you’re not a fan of the Karate Kid or are too young to remember the first movie that much. That’s okay really, the movies that a lot of us watched when we were younger are pretty dated, but to us they’re still great since they’re a reminder of the days when we were kids and the movies we thought would last forever were still great. As Kevin Burwick of MovieWeb reminds us Garrison was the one that coined the phrase “Put him in a body bag!” when Johnny and Daniel were fighting for the championship. Like a lot of the other Cobra’s he wasn’t a big fan of Daniel and wanted to put him out of commission, but in the second movie he was there to back up his friend Johnny when their sensei turned on them.
Garrison had a career in TV and in movies before the Karate Kid but kind of faded out after the movies. He did manage to go to the conventions though and promote Cobra Kai along with William Zabka and Martin Kove. He even made an appearance in the second season of Cobra Kai when Johnny and his old buddies got together to have fun and go camping. The fight scene that took place in the bar was pretty intense and showed that the guys still have what it takes to kick some serious butt when they want to. Despite being seen as one of the bad guys in the original movie he was still an important part since Johnny’s posse was vital to the movie in the way that it set Daniel up as the hero. A few people, like Denette Wilford of The Loop, have tried to claim that Daniel was the villain in the movie and that Johnny was the good guy, but it depends heavily on what point of view a person is looking at to really understand this. When you think about the fact that Daniel was on his own and that Johnny and his goon squad were bound and determined to break the new kid in half for next to nothing it seems kind of hard to justify such a statement. Of course Daniel didn’t really make his case any better since he just had to keep trying to get back at the Cobra’s and let his pride get in the way of common sense a lot, but overall Johnny and his buddies were a bunch of jerks more often than not, and now we know why, at least in Johnny’s case.
One thing you can say about the Karate Kid movies and Cobra Kai is that they’re not overly flashy and they’re not reliant upon wire maneuvers that make a person look as though they’re flying through the air or defying the laws of gravity. Well, there might be some unique stuntwork in there but a lot of it seems like straightforward fighting that in some cases might be a little extraneous and for show but in a lot of cases is just straight up fighting that’s meant to produce a winner and a loser. Garrison was one of those that you got to see in single’s competition but when it came to beating on Daniel he was just a part of the crowd that went along with pretty much anything Johnny said. In other words his character was kind of a stooge that didn’t really get a whole lot of development, but at the same time didn’t need it.
The Karate Kid has been a movie that a lot of us still revere since it wasn’t too over the top, it didn’t promote much more than a sense of fair play that a lot of people wanted, and it gave us a pretty clear case of good guy vs. bad guy throughout all three movies. Cobra Kai has really come in and opened our eyes however as to why Johnny was the way he was and the fact that he’s a much more complicated person than we were initially led to believe. His crew turned out to be decent human beings upon growing older as well, and while it’s likely that none of them would have really thought much of Daniel, who’s turned out to be kind of a jerk in the Cobra Kai series even though he means well, it’s also likely that they might have buried the hatchet rather than try to fight him again. After all by the time one gets to adulthood if old grudges are still the reason a person does anything in life, then they’ve wasted a lot of years doing absolutely nothing and refusing to grow up.
Rest in peace Mr. Garrison, you were a part of something great and will be remembered for it.
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