Never Back Down Karate Kid Movie Comparison

There were 4 Never Back Down movies. I have only seen the first three Never Back Down movies, but this article is going to focus on the first Never Back Down movie and its comparison to the Karate Kid movies.

The main difference between the two first Never Back Down movie and the Karate Kid movies is that inside Never Back Down the fighting style is Mixed Martial Arts and in Karate Kid of course the fighting style in karate.

Other than that, it is virtually same movie. In Karate Kid Daniel movies to another location, and begins to get picked on by a group of Karate students and Daniel get beat up and that was when Mr. Miagi decided he would train Daniel in the martial art of Karate.

The male main character in Never Back Down (Sorry I cannot think of the character's name this second) moves to another state and he winds up getting invited to a party under false pretenses where he gets beat up by a fellow high school student who is well aware of the Mixed Martial Arts fighting style.

Then the character in Never Back Down gets accepted inside a Mixed Martial Arts Academy. Where he is trained by a bad ass former Mixed Martial Artists who has one main rule no matter the Mixed Martial Arts this former fighter teaches inside his class the Mixed Martial Arts moves, and fighting wasn't allowed outside of the classroom experience.

Where in the Karate Kid Mr. Miagi gets Daniel involved in a Karate Tournament at the end of the Karate Kid and Daniel faces off against the bully that was bullying him in the finals of that Karate Tournament at the end of Karate Kid,

The end of Never Back Down is similar in the sense the main character of Never Back Down enters a Mixed Martial Arts underground tournament that the bully in Never Back Down always won. The bully goated the main character of Never Back Down to enter the Underground MMA Tournament. But when the Tournament begins to take place, the bully gets disqualified and kicked out of the tournament, and when the main character sees he won't face his high school bully he dropped out of the tournament. 

So, there wasn't finals fight between the bully and the high schooler who had been getting picked on by the bully inside the tournament. Except, there was a finals no holds barred fight between the bully and the kid he beat up at the beginning of the movie with mixed martial arts outside of the tournament venue inside the parking lot where the main male good guy beat his high school bully into submission.

The movie ends with everyone leaving high school and the bully and the good guy giving each other a nod. This is something we didn't see anything close to between Daniel and his bully from the Karate Kid until the Cobra Kai Karate Kid spinoff series kicked off on YouTube Red years ago before later being picked up by Netflix.

In a lot of areas these two movies are very similar, and I think they are both great movies. I also believer Never Back Down is the modern-day Karate Kid.