The Karate Kid III (1989) - 6 questions

Question: Why is Daniel afraid of Mike Barnes when he fought in a supposed fight to the death against a karate master in the second film?

Answer: He is fighting someone who is specifically trying to hurt and injure him. He also is worried because he was betrayed by Terry Silver and doesn't know how much Barnes knows about him.

Question: Was there a particular reason why the defending champion only fought in the last fight/round? Why exactly did the rules change in this tournament?

Answer: My guess is that they wanted to give everyone a chance to fight to the end without a bunch of people needing to fight the previous champion, and therefore be knocked out early by someone of obviously higher skill.

Question: What's the story behind Mike Barnes? How old is he? Where does he come from?

Answer: Mike Barnes is another karate champion, someone known in the karate tournament world as being brutal and excellent. It is never stated where he comes from, but it is far enough away to require a plane flight. His age is also never stated, but as it is an under-18 tournament and he can drive a car, we can assume it is either 16 or 17.

Question: Why does Daniel's karate skills regress in this movie? After fighting a Karate champ in the first movie and a Japanese fighter in the second, surely he must have gotten better as a fighter, not worse?

Answer: First he could have just been out of practice, but the point they made in the movie was that his moves were old, so they knew how to counter the things he did in the past to win.

Question: What exactly did John Kreese mean when he says to Terry Silver, "You're telegraphing that wheel kick?", what did he mean?

Answer: He is saying that when Silver thinks about using the wheel kick, it is revealed by something in his stance or technique beforehand, so his opponent will have plenty of time to block, evade or counter-attack the kick. It is a fairly common expression in sports, but particularly in martial arts.

Question: On IMDB, the bio for actor Sean Kanan who played Mike Barnes, stated that he almost died during filming of this movie. However the trivia section states nothing about it. Does anybody out there know what happened that caused him to almost die?

Answer: Kanan performed his own stunts, and during one of these he was injured with an internal bleeding, which was not discovered until later. When he took aspirin for the pain, combined with his injuries he went into hypovolemic shock and had to be rushed to the hospital.