Cobrai Kai: What is the Sekai Taikai tournament? Is it real?

After watching Cobra Kai S5, some scoff at Terry Silver being the big, bad villain. After all, his evil master plan just involved a monopoly of dojos and getting his students involved in an international tournament, Sekai Taikai.

Knowing Silver’s dirty tricks, it’s good that Daniel, Johnny, and the gang nipped his schemes in the bud. But even with the villain gone, the season ends with quite a lot of questions and unresolved threads.

One of them is the Sekai Taikai tournament, which was a matter of big contention this season. Let’s get into the basics first—is this a real competition? What role is it going to play in Cobra Kai’s future?

The Sekai Taikai is not a real tournament. Just like the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament, the Sekai Taikai, too, is simply one that is created to fit Cobra Kai’s narrative universe.

Now, there are plenty of real international tournaments that take place every year. But it may not be feasible to use these in Cobra Kai. Apart from dealing with copyrights and representation issues, these tournaments may not have events/rules that fit Cobra Kai’s storyline.

Creating a new tournament gives the show freedom to add in whatever they’d like to ensure getting out the juiciest story. One good example we have from S5 itself is how the Sekai Taikai committee ended up allowing both Cobra Kai and Miyagi-do-Eagle Fang to enter the competition. Real-world tournaments would hardly allow for such emotional rule-bending.

Now onto answering the next query: Sekai Taikai will most likely be part of Cobra Kai S6’s arc. S5 spent too much time setting this up, so I expect that raising the stakes higher for S6 would involve the international contest. While we’re yet to learn if Season 6 will be the show’s last, if it does decide to end here, this would be a fantastic high note to close the curtains.

With Silver out of the picture, technical issues crop up, like is Cobra Kai as a dojo still eligible to take part in the tournament? What about its students? Still, I think these are relatively smaller points that I’m sure the show will easily deal with once it returns.

About Cobra Kai

Cobra Kai is an action drama that is a reboot/sequel of The Karate Kid movies. It premiered on YouTube in 2018, and subsequently moved to Netflix. The series stars Ralph Macchio, William Zabka, Xolo Maridueña, Tanner Buchanan, Courtney Henggeler and Mary Mouser.

When Johnny Lawrence opens the Cobra Kai dojo to teach his bullied teenage neighbor, Miguel, how to defend himself, his age-old rivalry with Daniel LaRusso is ignited once more. Will their rivalry continue to affect their present lives and those they love, or will they be able to bury the past?