9. Daniel La Russo (Karate Kid 1 to 3)
Formidable? Hmmm ok maybe that's a matter of perspective. He's no warlord or mythical creature but he's the title character of three martial arts movies who has one-to-one training with a master martial artist and seems to have few outside interests or social life outside of karate. And he sucks. From someone with a martial-arts background, well actually just as someone who has seen a lot of martial arts movies, Daniel-san has basically no techniques and is solely dependent on obscure techniques that work on opponents who have, in a moment of madness, given up their superior training and tried to bulrush him. This happens in the first film where Johnny charges at him just before the famous crane-kick. And he just charges. All the finesse and versatility he showed throughout the tournament and then he charges at him like a blind drunk. In the second film, Daniel has a great fight with Sato's protégé and just on the verge of defeat...the opponent just tries to throw predictable punches over and over again, despite the ineffectiveness. In Daniel La Russo's final boss in Karate Kid 3, he uses that dumb kata routine to confuse his opponent. And boy did he look confused. Mike (his opponent) then just threw a punch that demonstrated no martial arts background whatsoever and loses via the bizarre rules of the tournament. Incidentally, Daniel's wins in the karate tournament are under quite restricted rules where kicks to the face are illegal (which makes the iconic crane-kick all the more confusing). So ultimately, despite being in his late adolescence and with excellent private tuition over at least a couple of years, our martial arts hero shows very little actual karate and this is all the more apparent when you look at every other martial artist in the movies, ignoring the Hilary Swank film of course ( and even she had better moves).