Knocking people out by punching them

Put it this way, the bones in your hand are far more brittle than the bones in your head.

It is possible to knock someone unconscious with a clean blow around the jaw area, but the likelier outcome is a broken hand and six weeks in plaster.

A punch to the temple will do it, I imagine.

I have an uncle who punched a man in the face once and killed him. Spent a little time in prison, he did.

I have been in quite a few fights and I have never knocked anyone out, but I saw a guy get knocked out at a night club and it was kinda messed up. He made this scary snoring sound and every time he exhaled , blood would pour out of his nose.

hell, that guy in 'irreversible' took the ol' fire exstinguisher a good 10-15 times and didn't even blink

You're Bruce Willis' nephew?!

Butch ain't got shit on my Uncle Terry.

Just watch some boxing matches or extreme fighting bouts. Sometimes, people get knocked out with a punch that connects perfectly, but it's rare. It surely isn't as clean as in the movies. Knocking out your girlfriend to "keep her out of trouble" is a pretty bad idea. If she's knocked out, she's probably suffering from a concussion.

This is something that I now find unaceptable in modern movies. It completely wrecks the suspension of disbelief for me when it happens in a movie. The James Bond series is probably the worst offender.

You gotta give them a concussion. I've punched people one time in the face and knocked them on their ass, but never given a concussion.

Thrown several sure-shot punches to the head/jaw/eye/nose and never knocked anyone out. Just knocked them down.

I've been beaten over the head with a magnum flashlight and wasn't knocked out, so not sure what it takes...and as I'm older and somewhat wiser now, I really have no desire to find out.

I have indeed knocked out 2 people with one simple punch.

The first was an accident. WE were "shadow boxing" and he dipped at the wrong time. I caught him right between the eyes with a right cross. It snapped his neck back, he went pale and just collapsed. This was in high school, so of course the teachers freak out thinking I killed him. He was out for a good 5-10 minutes.

The other was my brother. I gave him an upper cut, caught him where his throat meets his chin and he went down FAST. Like someone else described earlier, we thought he was goofing around, because he kept making this loud snoring sound.

SO, from my experience, it is possible to knock someone out with "one clean punch" I just have no idea how the hell you would be able to do it consistantly or reliably.

To knock someone out with a punch, you essentially need to make their brain rattle around inside their skull enough to make it tell the rest of the body to sit down and take a break for a while. As has been said, this can often lead to a concussion.

The easiest way to do this is probably with a cross to the chin. When you do this right, the jaw and then the head get driven back as far as they can go, but there's still momentum, which gets transferred into the brain. If you do it hard enough, the brain meets the skull, and it's nighty night.

The most common knockout punch, though, is the hook. I believe, though I can't back it up, that this is more because the punch is harder to see coming, and thus harder to block, than anything to do with the mechanics of the punch itself.

As has been said, if you go around punching people in the head, you are going to break your hand. This is why bare knuckle boxing, and mixed martial arts, are actually safer than boxing with gloves on. In bare knuckle fighting, the dammage looks worse to the unknowledgeable; blood all over the place, as the skin around the head is thin, and bleeds like crazy. With Marquis de Queensburry rules, however, the men involved are expected to stand there and swing at each other's heads for 12 rounds; this simply isn't possible without gloves, and leads to brain dammage.

regardless, Gwn Paltro would fold like a pair of 2s if you poped her on the jaw, and she'd have a big bruise and a nice concussion to go along with it. If you want to knock out your love interest, it's best to go with a rear naked strangle. ;-)

Right in the jaw area, slightly below the ear about an inch out (towards the mouth). The sudden rush of pain to the area of the jaw you strike, combined with the pain that rushes through to the other side of your face is usually enough to drop someone to their knees. A strong enough blow to that area would knock them out cold.

Incidently, I found this out during a bout of rough sex with an ex. Lest you think I'm a terrible person, she was the one who knocked me out with the hit.

Life is very odd sometimes...

Check out "www.killsometime.com". Look in the videos section, and look for the clip that says something like, "Nerd Knockout". I'd do it, but my firewall at work won't let me to the site. This goofy looking guy is yelling at a bigger guy, and the bigger guy just hauls off and whacks the "nerd" in the jaw and knocks him the fuck out.
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It may not be as common or easy as it looks in the movies, but it certainly happens.

It's not that difficult at all. I've done it a few times. Once a perfectly placed uppercut right beneath the chin. I'v also done it across the temple but not with a straight shot, i actually used a hammer-like strike with the side of my hand.

Well, conversely, a concussion won't necessarily knock you out.

I got blindsided in a high school football game and ended up with a pretty good concussion, but the lights never went out.

That's why, for knocking people out, I prefer my trusty blackjack.

If anyone's reading this thread for technique, I'd avoid those that tell you to hit the temple. You can kill someone that way.

Course, if you're looking to kill 'em, never mind. But keep in mind that it might land you in prison.

I'm reading a book right now ("The Games Do Count") that is a bunch of short essays by famous people (actors, politicians, CEOs, etc.) and how sports impacted their lives. The first one is from Tony Danza, and he talks about boxing. He said he was in one fight where he zigged when he should've zagged, and this guy caught him with a punch right to his temple. He said he never blacked out, but he said the lights got really bright, and the next thing he could focus on was his trainer, and suddenly he was in his dressing room. He asked his trainer what happened, and he said, "You've got a concussion, kid." When he asked him how he knew that, his trainer said, "Well, after you got knocked out, you stood up, thanked the ref, thanked the other fighter, and thanked his corner. And you're too much of a sore loser to do that normally."

A few years a go after a long night of drinking, a group of my friends decided to play Fight Club. The rule was the hitter's fist had to be closed and connect at the side of the jaw (no frontal, nose, ear or eye hits). Most of the punches were hard and people felt the sting, but overall they were relatively harmless.

My roommate, however, took a punch that must have connected really well because he immediately fell to the ground. He wasn't knocked unconscious, but as he tried to get up, he lost his balance and fell back down. This happened several times until he realized that maybe he should should just stay down and let the dizzyness subside. I've seen this guy get in many a fight and never have I seen him get knocked out like that. He just kept muttering, "That was a good one. You got me good" over and over.

No offense, but "playing Fight Club" is fucked up. Get new friends.

The depth of knowledge/experience of violence in this thread is kinda worrisome.

Make love, not war. Peace.

And we gained it all from cinema, bless its soul.

I guess you haven't watched enough GI Joe then. The Joes can throw a punch at a full sprint that not only knocks the guy out cold but sends him flying. Of course, they are the best.

Man, I hope I never make a movie any of you guys see. You're almost as bad as my friend.

Me: Here's my first movie, watch it and tell me what you think.

Him: (his lone post-viewing comment) Next time, let me do the fight choreography.

Anyone who has survived highschool/college has had friends that rough housed with each other for no reason at all except that it was fun. "Fight Club" just gave it a name.

Not me. Mind you, I went to a pretty lame high school (Te Awamutu College, kia kaha!). And I had no friends. Grrrrr I'm so angry I could PUNCH SOMEONE!!!

Remember kids, violence is not the answer.

Except I think most of our ruffhousin' had more in common with WWF than UFC.

I boxed for two years for my college club team as a heavyweight, and I never knocked anybody out. Down, yes. Barely conscious and"out of it", yes. Never done it in a street fight, either. I had my bell rung about as hard as it can be rung on a couple of occasions, but never got "knocked out". I've come to the conclusion that knocking someone completely out with a punch is pretty darn rare.

I can only recall two times when I saw somebody completely lose consciousness. A buddy of mine cold-cocked a drunk with a straight right hand when he refused to leave a party we were bouncing at. The guy dropped like a load of bricks and began snorting. We were pretty sure he was dying.

Our head boxing coach knocked out this pretty darn good middleweight with a left hook that broke the guy's nose. He was lights out for a good five minutes. The coach actually dragged him out of the ring and began sparring with someone else. That guy was a cruel bastard. He used to make me spar him using nothing but jabs. That wasn't fun.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when movies have people go flying or get knocked out by glancing or horribly choreographed blows. I.e., the "I'll snap my leg straight up in the air past my face and knock out this guy who is choking me from behind" move.

Movies in general also do a rather horrible job of depicting just how crucial the weight/muscle differential is. While I like watching Jennifer Garner gyrate through martial arts, I really hope Alias doesn't encourage 110 pound women that they can take a karate class and learn how to fend off multiple assailants.

I'm a sucker for this. I'll come out of an action movie and start throwing punches (playful ones) or doing round house kicks to my guy friends (all of whom outweigh me by at least 100 lbs). Needless to say, they look at me amusedly, and when I start to annoy them, they reach out and grab my leg or arm and I'm physically unable to get out of their grip. It sucks being tiny.

From a more medical point of view, a well placed uppercut to the jaw with a resulting snap back of the head is probably the best way to knock someone unconscious. Why does it work? Strangely enough its related to your gut. There are nerves running underneath your chin that are linked to the teeth, tounge, esophagus, and all other sorts of early digestive functions. When you hit those nerve bundles with an uppercut, you cause a detour of blood flow to the abdominal organs involved in digestion, because your body thinks you are going to be activating your digestive track. This sudden blood shift, means the blood supply to the brain drops quick, which equals unconsciousness.

This theory also explains why you can do a real life vulcan death grip of sorts. By putting a lot of force on the Carotid artery (which houses a pressure receptor) you trick that nerve into thinking there is a lot of pressure running through the artery so I better tell the heart to slow down and dilate my vessels to lower blood pressure. This results in unconsciousness because there really wasn't any increased pressure systemically, it was articifically created on the receptor itself.

If you hit a guy with a hook, the going theory on that is that by forcibly causing the head to spin, you put stress on the brain stem, which houses your breathing center, arousal center (not your dick, but your consciousness), etc. So the belief is that too much stress to that region causes your brain to shut off in response to it.

From Diva:
This anecdote made me chuckle.

When I was in the US Army, and we started unarmed combat, ie Hand to Hand combat training, the first thing our instructor told us was to "forget all the bulllshit you see in the movies and on Television. Try that shit in real combat and you are fucking dead".

I knocked out a guy once with a straight punch to the face. He was coming forward, I threw a right jab essentially, hit him right in the middle of his face and in the ensuing fall he smacked his head on the ground. Result, me not getting hit, him knocked out with a disappointed girl friend.