Cobra Kai alum Martin Kove, known for having played the villainous John Kreese in the Netflix series and the original The Karate Kid movie and its sequels, was “escorted out” of a fan event Sunday, after biting former costar Alicia Hannah-Kim, according to a police report.
The document, reviewed by Entertainment Weekly, noted that Hannah-Kim, who portrayed Kim Da-Eun on more than a dozen episodes of the Emmy-nominated martial arts series, saw Kove when both appeared at the Washington State Summer Con in Puyallup. She stopped to say hello to him, and that’s when he grabbed her and bit her, she told police.
“I walked past Martin Kove, tapped him on the shoulder and said hello & he turned around grabbed my arm and BIT DOWN HARD almost drawing blood,” Hannah-Kim explained in a handwritten statement to police. “I yelped and drew back and then he grabbed my arm again to kiss it.”
The actress said she withdrew to her table and told her handler as well as her husband, Sebastian Roche.
“I had visible teeth marks and immediate bruising and pain,” she continued in her statement. “We approached Martin in the green room later (30 mins) and he was furious & outraged and visibly angry when I told him calmly not to bite me. He insisted he bit me for fun.”
Curtis Bonds Baker/Netflix
Alicia Hannah-Kim and Martin Kove star in ‘Cobra Kai’ in 2024
Kove told police he was “messing around,” the officer who filed the report wrote. The officer told the actor that what he had done was illegal. Kove “admitted to biting Alicia’s arm and said he did it out of jest and he thought he was being funny, and they play fight all the time on the set of Cobra Kai, and he did not think it was a big deal,” the officer noted.
Eventually, Hannah-Kim spoke to Kove and he apologized, according to the officer’s report.
While the actress opted not to press charges against Kove, she filed a report and her injury was documented in case of future incidents, the officer wrote.
“I asked him if he wanted to provide a voluntary handwritten statement, but he declined and shaking my hand he thanked me (as did his son) and he was escorted out of Summer Con,” according to the officer.
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Entertainment Weekly has reached out to reps for both Kove and Hannah-Kim.
Kove’s character of Kreese has long been a villain in the Karate Kid universe, appearing in three movies and most recently on Netflix reboot series Cobra Kai, which the character joined in season 1 on episode 6 in an uncredited appearance. Kove ultimately became a major character and appeared in 57 episodes, according to IMDb.
“The Kreese at the beginning of season 6 was the most venomous version of Kreese that we’ve seen,” series co-creator Jon Hurwitz told EW in February. “All bets have been off this year with his hatred towards Johnny and Daniel. He was volatile, and that anger boiled over to him bringing the knife to the tournament — which led to it falling out and his own student getting killed…. It kind of rocks Kreese’s world in a way that nothing else has up until this point. And he’s trying to figure out where to go from here.”
Hannah-Kim played formidable sensei Kim Da-Eun on the series, who is in a partnership with Kreese that she comes to regret when the student is killed.
“She’s a strategist and she’s weighing all of her options all the time,” the actress told EW in an interview published in November 2024. “Kim and Kreese’s relationship is so complicated. She is grateful to him for this past friendship, where he really protected her and was a mentor figure to her,”
She continued, “What’s disturbing for Kim is when there’s a loss of control. Kreese doesn’t have that same fear, and so she does start to feel that instability. Of course, it goes haywire in episode 10, and that’s when the consequences really hit the fan.”
The sixth and final season of Cobra Kai was released in February on Netflix.
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