A karate master gets humbled so badly he wakes up in a hospital bed with everything he knew rendered obsolete. The series doesn't let him sulk or reinvent himself as the same person with a new technique, it forces him to admit kickboxing is the superior art and rebuild from actual zero. That's not redemption, that's annihilation followed by the slow, grinding work of becoming a student again when you were supposed to be a master.

Tadashi Sawamura is a proud karate master who steps into the kickboxing ring to show that his art is superior. The plan backfires badly: a fighter trained in this newer discipline beats him so severely that he ends up in a coma. Once he recovers, his trainer Endo persuades him to take up kickboxing himself as a way to win back his honor. The 1970 sports drama draws loosely on the real career of the champion kickboxer who shares Sawamura's name.