LOL: John Cena Makes 'The Karate Kid' Final Fight Go Much Differently On 'SNL'
Wrestling superstar and John Cena continued his crossover from WWE fame to mainstream acting by hosting Saturday Night Live for the first time. We'll have a recap of the full episode later today, but one particular sketch deserved to be singled out, even if it wasn't the funniest of the night.
The final fight of The Karate Kid is one of the most famous endings to any sports drama ever. However, that final fight might have gone a little differently if Daniel LaRusso was facing John Cena as the high school bully and Cobra Kai dojo fighter Johnny Lawrence.
Watch the John Cena Karate Kid sketch from SNL after the jump.
The names of the characters in this sketch have been changed which simultaneously avoids any rights problems while also being an amusing part of the parody. Instead of Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso, we get featured player Mikey Day as Jeffy Le'Hart. And instead of Billy Zabka as Johnny Lawrence, we get John Cena as Sammy Knox. They're both fighting each other in the finals of the San Fernando Valley Karate Championships.
While we all know how the final fight of The Karate Kid goes, this time it turns out that the training by his mentor Mr. Johnson, who showed him how to grab a penny out of the middle of a handful of change tossed into the air, didn't really do much to help him face-off against a superior fighter. What follows is a serious beat down of our hero, complete with a sequence that knocks him through several walls, not unlike the Bass Battle that Michael Cera has with Brandon Routh in Scott Pilgrim vs The World.
As I said, this wasn't the funniest sketch of the night. The production value is there, and it's a rather flawless parody, but it's also a rather simple premise that doesn't quite reach the level of being hilarious. It's executed rather well, but the comedy just doesn't match up with how good it actually looks, though I will say that having Mr. Johnson tell Jeffy to give up was rather funny.
Speaking of which, I can't help but point out that having Kenan Thompson in the role of Jeffy Le'Hart's mentor reveals that SNL still has a cultural gap in their cast by not having a single Asian cast member. If there's one thing that MADtv always beat SNL at, it was having a diverse cast that easily allowed them to lampoon all races and cultures. SNL has been slow to diversify, but they're getting there.