Rayna Vallandingham was introduced as Avenue Fighter’s Juli within the upcoming 2026 film. She is finest identified for each elite martial arts competitors and movie appearing. At simply 22 years outdated, she’s already collected taekwondo credentials that almost all athletes spend lifetimes chasing, then pivoted towards Hollywood at an age when most individuals are nonetheless determining what they need to do.
Who Is Rayna Vallandingham?
The foundation for Vallandingham’s career was laid remarkably early. She began training in taekwondo at age two, encouraged by her grandfather in her local dojo. Her father is of Dutch origin and her mother is of Indian descent, and the family clearly prioritized her athletic development from the start. By age six, she earned her first black belt. Two years later, at eight years old, she accomplished what most martial artists never do: she won her first world championship title at the American Taekwondo Association World Championships in 2011.
Taekwondo
What distinguished Vallandingham’s rise was the breadth of her dominance. She claimed titles throughout conventional types, weapons classes (bo employees and nunchaku), sparring, and inventive weapons competitions. Her victories in that 2011 championship constituted a Triple Crown achievement, one thing few black belts ever accomplish, not to mention at her age. By her early twenties, she collected 13 American Taekwondo Affiliation world titles and achieved a fourth-degree black belt rating.
Vallandingham spends roughly two hours per day practising martial arts, supplemented by a number of energy coaching periods. She turned the youngest competitor to carry out within the 12-14 age group on ESPN, performing in entrance of 1000’s of viewers.
Performing
Her transition to appearing occurred with the identical depth. At age ten, instantly after successful a world championship in Arkansas, she flew to Los Angeles to debut within the movie Underdog Youngsters, directed by Phillip Rhee, the place she performed Leticia Hernandez. Quite than treating appearing as a substitute profession, she developed it alongside her martial arts basis.
Between that 2015 debut and her breakthrough function, Vallandingham auditioned for twelve years earlier than touchdown her main alternative. Throughout these years of rejection, she didn’t abandon martial arts. As a substitute, she constructed a social media presence that grew from 7,000 followers to over a million, finally reaching 3.2 million followers on TikTok alone. Her content material merged martial arts with style and make-up tutorials, filling a distinct segment that comparatively few creators occupied. She appeared in music movies, together with the 2018 Shawn Mendes observe “Youth” that includes Khalid.
Her breakthrough got here on her twentieth birthday when she acquired the decision for Netflix’s Cobra Kai Season 6. The function of Zara Malik positioned her as a talented martial artist and social media influencer competing inside the Iron Dragons dojo. Filming demanded consecutive twelve-hour days of pure motion work, together with wire work, weapon choreography, and emotional scenes between bodily sequences. She carried out lots of her personal stunts slightly than counting on stunt doubles, bringing the identical ability to tv that gained her 13 world titles.
Juli
At The Sport Awards 2025, held December 11, she was revealed as a part of the solid for the upcoming Avenue Fighter live-action adaptation. She performs Juli, considered one of M. Bison’s educated assassins and members of a brainwashed unit known as the Dolls within the supply materials.
Within the video video games, Juli seems as a teenage fighter with distinctive acrobatic and martial arts coaching, having been kidnapped and enhanced with genetic materials from different characters. She’s depicted as extremely cell, with in depth assassination coaching and fight capabilities that place her among the many most succesful Dolls below Bison’s management.
The Avenue Fighter Film
The Avenue Fighter film itself represents Legendary Leisure and Paramount Photos’ try and adapt the traditional Capcom preventing recreation franchise for the display. Directed by Kitao Sakurai and set in 1993, the movie reunites estranged fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) when the mysterious Chun-Li (Callina Liang) recruits them for the World Warrior Event. The story entails a lethal conspiracy forcing them to confront their previous. The ensemble solid contains Roman Reigns as Akuma, Jason Momoa as Blanka, 50 Cent as Balrog, Orville Peck as Vega, and Mel Jarnson as Cammy, amongst others. The movie releases October 16, 2026.
Vallandingham’s casting as Juli makes sense. The role requires authentic martial arts capability rather than choreography learned on set. Her background in weapons training, acrobatic technique, and competition experience under pressure provide the foundation to portray a character whose fighting abilities define her character.
She’s simultaneously a legitimate taekwondo world champion athlete and a professional performer, making her one of the few people equipped to convincingly portray characters whose fictional skills match her actual capabilities.
