Xolo Maridueña, the lead actor of the popular Netflix Original series Cobra Kai, has once again proved that he is indeed a man of culture. Here’s his tweet in response to a Netflix billboard that proves this:

For those of you unfamiliar with 70s funk music, his joke “I don’t know karate but I know Ka-razy” is a play on James Brown’s lyrics that go as follows:

“Don’t do me no darn favor

I don’t know karate, but I know Ka-Razor”

Who was James Brown?

Many of us might have come across the usual, popular names of David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, or Elton John. What we usually don’t hear of is the number of influential black artists that paved the way to the modern music industry. The biggest example of Black erasure would be ‘Surfin’ USA’ by The Beach Boys. The song is a blatant rip-off of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Sixteen. One of the first black artists so influential that their erasure was impossible was James Joseph Brown in the mid-60s.

Brown was one of the most influential figures of his time in the music industry. The man is known as the “Godfather of Soul”. However, he certainly isn’t “forgotten” as fans continue to remember him by his popular songs like “It’s a man’s man’s man’s world”.

Hence, it was certainly heartening to see a young artist with Mexican, Cuban, and Ecuadorian roots pay homage to an iconic legend who changed an industry for an entire race a few decades ago, even if it was something as tiny as a playful tweet.

Wait, so does Xolo Maridueña know Karate in Cobra Kai?

Although it might come across as a surprise to many fans, Maridueña actually cannot do any karate. The young actor only has received as much training in this martial art as the creators of Cobra Kai have decided to give him. Alongside Mary Mouser, who’s the other protagonist of the Netflix Original series, the pair is one of the least experienced in combat sports.

This, however, is not the case with Tanner Buchanan and Jacob Bertrand, who have years of experience in fighting and combat sports. Buchanan even took up training in taekwondo and a little bit of Muay Thai.

Despite this, Cobra Kai has some of the best fighting sequences out there. Stream the Netflix Original series on the platform right now!