Top 10 Daredevil Martial Arts Fights KUNG FU KINGDOM
Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter), and Danny Rand (Finn Jones) finally join forces as the eponymous team of street-level superheroes in “The Defenders”, but the show makes their initial team up one that happens almost as a happy accident, and one that brings their fighting skills together in a spectacular action scene under Matt Mullins’ fight choreography.
Matt, Jessica, Luke, and Danny each have their own individual reasons for confronting the Hand, with Danny first trying to fight them off solo before Luke, Matt, and Jessica arrive in succession, with the boardroom and hallway fight growing more elaborate and enthralling as the team grows.
For Matt’s part, he also has a one-on-one section of the fight with his old girlfriend Elektra Natchios (Elodie Yung), with a little help from Danny’s most-famed power as the Iron Fist.
For the first meeting of a team of superheroes, “The Defenders” makes an extremely convincing case that a martial arts fight works wonders to start the team off right.
Matt Murdock and Danny Rand come to blows over their differing perspectives on how to defeat The Hand in “The Defenders”, and it’s an enthralling hero-vs-hero smackdown of the team’s martial arts masters.
Danny and Matt’s respective training and backgrounds also gives their fight a Shaolin monk vs. Ninja quality in the contrast of their fighting styles, and as the two most trained Defenders, Danny and Matt really get to show off the breadth of their training in a completely different way with the two having to fight their own anger at each other to win in the safest way possible.
And yes, the Iron Fist itself punctuates the Daredevil vs. Iron Fist fight in a properly show-stopping manner.
“Daredevil” season one culminates in the season’s much anticipated battle royale between Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin and The Man Without Fear, with the latter finally clad in his classic red suit complete with his signature devil horns.
Comic book lovers know Daredevil and Wilson Fisk’s long-standing enmity well, and the show’s season one finale does not disappoint in its final brawl of the Kingpin’s rage-filled bull-rushes and Matt Murdock’s aerial spinning kicks and somersaults (the latter courtesy of stunt pro Chris Brewster, who also provided Steve Rogers’ astonishing martial arts skills in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”).
Daredevil and the Kingpin meet again plenty of times on “Daredevil”, but season one’s climactic Daredevil vs. Kingpin street fight set the tone for their fist-to-fist battles very well.
“Daredevil” went into its second season with a uniquely specific mandate that most shows don’t have, that being following up the very memorable one-shot hallway fight from “Daredevil” season one – and naturally, The Man Without Fear can’t resist a challenge of that nature, leading to season two’s wild single-take stairwell fight sequence.
This time, Matt Murdock has both a handicap and an advantage in having an empty revolver taped to one hand and a chain around the other, and suffice it to say that he makes quite liberal use of the latter.
“Daredevil” season one helped spark the one-shot fight scene phenomenon, but it was truly the stairwell brawl of “Daredevil” season two that made one-shot martial arts battles a staple of Daredevil’s live-action adventures.
Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist finally unite as a team to take down the Hand in the underground showdown of “The Defenders”, and Daredevil brings all his gravity-defying Ninjutsu skills to defeat his well-known band of enemies from the comics.
To be sure, the final showdown is very much a team fight with each of the four Defenders working together in concert. However, each member still snags their show-stealing money shot moments, with Daredevil’s specifically coming in the form of a well-executed series of spinning kicks against a band of Hand ninjas.
With the individual Defenders gradually re-entering the MCU fray, hopefully that’s not the last such instance of Daredevil’s spinning kicks against ninja warriors of his skill level!
The Kingpin is well-known as one of Daredevil’s two arch-nemeses, and “Daredevil” season three finally brought in The Man Without Fear’s second most sworn enemy, Bullseye (Wilson Bethel), kicking their rivalry off marvelously in a fast-paced brawl in a darkened New York City news office.
The camera holds for a full thirty seconds on the first section of the fight to really showcase Daredevil and Bullseye’s close-quarters combat skills, before expanding out for Bullseye to put his signature ability to work, that being his talent for wielding literally anything as a lethal projectile.
Even though the fight ends in a stalemate, it’s another example of the fight scenes of “Daredevil” always being top notch when Matt’s arch-villains come into play – and Daredevil and Bullseye are only just getting warmed up here!
Daredevil and Bullseye meet again for another battle of ninja warriors in the church brawl of “Daredevil” season three, this time with Matt clad in his original black ninja suit as Bullseye retains his Daredevil disguise from their first encounter.
Daredevil and Bullseye’s second match-up is even crazier than their first, with Matt breaking out every spinning kick and takedown in his arsenal, and Bullseye turning everything from candles to rosary beads to his equivalent of ninja shuriken. As in their first duel, Daredevil and Bullseye’s rematch ends without either emerging as the victor, and that hardly stops it from being another feast for the eyes for martial arts fans and superhero aficionados alike.
“Daredevil” season three meets its one-shot fight scene quota with one of Matt Murdock’s most challenging battles yet, with Matt fighting his way out of a prison riot while having to also fight to simply stay conscious after being partially injected with a sedative.
Naturally, that adds a degree of feral power and desperation Matt has never had to face before, and which perfectly fits the prison environment he finds himself fighting his way out of.
The prison fight is the most sustained and elaborate “Daredevil” one-shot fight scene to date, clocking in at an incredible 11 minutes with nearly non-stop combat packed into the set piece and only a brief break taken for a quick bit of plot exposition.
With its season three prison fight, “Daredevil” truly cemented itself as inseparable from one-shot fights and an absolute master of the craft that goes into them.
“Daredevil” season three culminates in one of the biggest knockdown, drag-out fights the show has ever delivered with Daredevil, the Kingpin, and Bullseye all going head-to-head in a winner-take-all free-for-all.
The ninja skills of Daredevil and Bullseye keep season three’s climactic showdown as fluid and elaborate as their previous two battles, while the Kingpin brings size, strength, and his ferocious temper to the battle to make himself a real challenge for both of his opponents.
Daredevil’s victory ends on a powerful note with Matt screaming his famous “I BEAT YOU!” monologue at the top of his lungs, but the final moments of “Daredevil” season three indicate this isn’t the last encounter Daredevil has had with either the Kingpin or Bullseye – and thankfully, with both joining the cast of the forthcoming “Daredevil: Born Again”, it most certainly won’t be!
…And in at number 1 is…
As has been mentioned multiple times in this very piece, “Daredevil” is well-regarded and beloved as a pioneer in both pushing fight choreography on a TV series to the next level and for making single-take action scenes more popular than ever.
It all goes back to the elaborate, enthralling, utterly captivating one-shot hallway fight scene of “Daredevil” season one, with Matt donning his black ninja suit and battling a gang of thugs to rescue a kidnapped child. Both for its visceral power and its phenomenal fight choreography, season one’s hallway fight is a superhero and martial arts fight scene champ. And it’s really in the impact of the sequence itself that this fight continues to stand the test of time.
The hallway fight of “Daredevil” season one carries clear influences from “Oldboy” and “The Raid” movies, which opened up an entire new wave of audiences to discover both.
Moreover, while the overall fight choreography of “Daredevil” helped push superhero action, both on TV and in movies, to the level audiences now take for granted, the hallway fight had such an impact that it is among the most important fight scenes of any superhero movie or TV series.
“Daredevil” deserves a great deal of the thanks for why we can now expect superhero fight scenes to be on the level of a top-level martial arts flick, while the show’s first single-take hallway fight also kickstarted greater emphasis in action films without capes or superpowers to dive into this kind of sustained fight choreography as the new fight scene craze.
For all of those reasons, the hallway fight of “Daredevil” season one earns the exalted distinction of being the greatest Daredevil martial arts fight!
Review of “Fist of Legend” (1994), Ultra HD version, Jet Li's fan fave action classic…
Review of “The Miracle Fighters” (1982) Blu-ray version. Quirky, action comedy classic. Dir. by Yuen…
Interview with Brahim Chab on his work as fight choreographer on Dev Patel’s directorial debut…
Review of “Life After Fighting” (2024), Australian martial arts thriller starring and directed by Bren…
When you want a change of scenery for practicing martial arts, consider building a dojo…
Meditation enhances focus, reduces stress, and promotes mental clarity, which is essential for improving martial…