(Updated with more details from police report) With threat of arrest in the air, Karate Kid and Cobra Kai actor Martin Kove was asked to leave a fan convention in Puyallup, Washington, over the weekend after he allegedly bit fellow Cobra Kai actor Alicia Hannah-Kim and tried to kiss her arm.
Hannah-Kim called police after Kove, allegedly unprovoked, grabbed the actress’ arm and bit it as she passed by a meet-and-greet table at the Summer Con convention on June 22. The bite was so hard it resulted in “almost drawing blood,” a statement from Hannah-Kim to local law enforcement detailed. Kove allegedly kissed her arm when she yelled out in pain, according to a police report obtained by Deadline. In her own statement, also in the police report, Hannah-Kim says “he grabbed my arm again to kiss it …I pulled my arm away and rushed back to my table.”
Hannah-Kim and her husband, actor Sebastian Roche, who witnessed the alleged incident, say they told Kove soon after what he did was completely unacceptable.
In the con green room, the actor was allegedly “was furious and outraged and visibly angry when I told him calmly not to bite me … he insisted he bit me for fun,” according to the handwritten statement from Hannah-Kim that accompanies the report. “We then decided to contact the officer at the con to resolve the situation, and possibly press charges,” Roche adds.
“I informed everyone that they were being audio and video recorded and that I was investigating an assault,” Puyallup, Police Office Eric Barry detailed in his report from Sunday evening “Martin 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,” Officer Barry adds.
In the end, Hannah-Kim decided not to press charges, she told Officer Barry at Summer Con after there was a a further face-to-face with Kove.
“I then re-contacted Martin Kove and explained that Alicia did not want to pursue charges, but he did indeed break the law according to the State of Washington and this behavior will not be tolerated in the future,” the officer wrote later in his report. “I provided him with a case number, and 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.”
Like his fellow Cobra Kai cast mates, Kove attendance’s at Summer Con was to sign autographs and have pics taken with fans – for a price. The dozens and dozens of such fan confabs across the nation each year can be very lucrative for genre actors, with some making $12,000 to $25,000 s day and even more depending on the show and their individual appeal.
While Hannah-Kim opted not to press charges against Kove on Sundat, she did request an informational police report be taken, along with photos for the record. Photos that show, aspolice report described, a “very noticeable bite mark on her arm that was already turning blue and bruising.:”
Deadline has contacted representatives for Kove, and Hannah-Kim, but neither has responded.
News of the incident at the event spread quickly among attendees, we are told. “It was all handled pretty quickly on site, and was over before you knew it,” an individual with knowledge of the events at Washington State Summer Con told Deadline today.
Kove and Hannah-Kim were part of a group of Cobra Kai talent attending the star-studded Summer Con over the weekend, Mary Mouser, Tanner Buchanan, Rayna Vallandingham and Patrick Luwis also participated. A huge but somewhat under the radar event for years, Summer Con 2025 also included the the likes of the Daredevil: Born Again cast, original Star Trek stars like William Shatner and Walter Koenig, and wrestling legend Chris Jericho.
Kove played John Kreese, the temperamental sensei in the original three Karate Kid films, reprising the role in Netflix’s Cobra Kai alongside Ralph Macchio and William Zabka across the show’s six seasons. Hannah-Kim joined the Cobra Kai cast in Season 5 as South Korean sensei Kim Da-Eun, remaining with the cast for the remainder of the series.
