But, the movie seemed to find an audience, which means we would get another sequel.Īnd that we did, with 2016’s Never Back Down: No Surrender.

The movie was entertaining enough, and featured great fight sequences, but really wasn’t as good as it could’ve been due to its insistence on following the 4 teens over the most interesting character in the movie: Case. This time, it starred Michael Jai White (who also made his directorial debut) as Case Walker, a down on his luck former MMA fighter who agrees to train 4 teenage would be fighters for an upcoming tournament, with varying degrees of success. SEQUEL!!! And in 2011, we got Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown on DVD. The movie was a fairly modest success, grossing almost $42 million WW on a $20 million budget. But it was by no means an action classic. It was predictable in the extreme, but it had its charms, and some neat fights. In it, Sean Faris plays Jake Tyler, a temperamental teen who learns MMA from martial arts master Jean Roqua (played by Djimon Hounsou) in an effort to take on the high school jock douchebag who humiliated him in a fight, as well as control his rage. īut that movie is essentially a Karate Kid rip-off anyway, so it all works out. In the spring of 2008, we saw the release of Never Back Down, a new martial arts sports teen drama in the vein of The Karate Kid, or if you ask me, a bigger budgeted version of the Billy Blanks DTV martial arts action/teen drama Showdown. Michael Jai White Directs and Stars in the powerful punching Never Back Down 3!

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