Sean Kanan says he nearly died while filming Karate Kid III – “I was bleeding to death”
More than 30 years after his role as “Karate’s Bad Boy” Mike Barnes in the 1989 trilogy “The Karate Kid” actor Sean Kanan recalls an incident that nearly saw his demise.
In speaking with Closer reporter Susan Hornik, Kanan was asked about filming Karate Kid III.
Do you have any memories of filming Karate Kid III that you can share?
“The biggest memory I have of filming Karate Kid III is how I almost lost my life!” Kanan said. “I’d been having a lot of discomfort in my upper thigh, so I’d been taking a lot of aspirin. On Christmas Day 1988, I found myself in the emergency room. I was bleeding to death. It was internal bleeding from a stunt that had nothing to do with martial arts. The pain in my thigh was blood dripping internally from my artery. Of course, the aspirin exacerbated the bleeding. To this day, it is still one of the scariest things that ever happened to me.”
Today, Kanan plays Barnes in the Netflix comedy-drama series Cobra Kai which is heading into its sixth and final season. That announcement is below:
