It is never really one punch that kills. Rather, the tens or hundreds of thousands of punches which came before it. There is only one opponent worth spending that much time and effort on. All this diligent training has one goal in mind...to deliver the killing blow to the opponent so that peace can be realized forever. Like thousands of drops of water which build up to the tidal wave that wipes everything away. What can you save?

Richard Kim related a story of how a teenage boy challenged him in his Seventies by sitting on Mr Kims car. R Kim asked him to get off, the young man, who was not alone, told him in a few profane words to get stuffed. R Kim then hit him once on the jaw and knocked him cold. Remember this was a man in his seventies. An aside to this was that R Kim 's wife scolded him for fighting.
I think one blow one kill is the ideal to train for. When the circumstances are right it can happen but you train for the situation to go longer.

So far I have yet to see a single blow kill a person. I did, however happen in Hawaii at a Chilli's restaurant in the early 90's.

A man was harrasing a guy trying to eat his food. The guy eating walked away but was persued by the harasser. He turned around and did a front kick to his chest and the harasser dropped dead on the spot because it stopped his heart.

I think if a person such as this, has an illness or some other physical disability it may be possible, but 2 healthy individuals, especially trained for combat, would not go belly up with a single hit IMO.

I've seen knockouts, but most of the time you should train to disable your opponent with a single blow - not try to kill him.

Not at ALL do I believe in the one punch, one kill. Absolute BS. Sounds good in theory, doesn't work out in application.

For sure, anything can happen. Odds are, this one won't.



-John

Someone may have already said this, I just didn't feel like reading everything, but I believe what the saying means (unless you punch them really hard in the throat) is that one hit decides the outcome of the match. One punch is thrown to start the fight which would, back in the older days of okinawa, also mean there would be one kill most likely. Or even today if someone just didn't really care aout goiing to jail. So I guess it would be like one hit starts the beggining of the kill. Just my opinion.

The translated Japanese phrase 'ikken issatsu' comes from the combat goal of Japanese Samurai. which makes more sense with a sword...and particularly on a battlefield.

we aren't samurai. we aren't on a battlefield. we don't have swords.

at best, a modern transformation of a phrase like this is when addressing intent...not as literal meaning. 'make each strike count', I believe is a more practical phrase for unarmed self-defense as oppossed to sword-weilding battlefield hacking.

i dont have proof about my story only that these stories have been passed down to me from my lineage so perhaps its not true but i belive that it is. as for the fighting a tiger with weapons i would suggest you read the karate dojo by Sensei Peter Urban which states that Sensei Yamaguchi did fight a tiger with his bare hands and killed it

Ummmm, yea, Peter Urban, what was I thinking?

Sky,

A baseball hits a kid in the chest and they die. The kick to the chest and the person dies is the same phenomena.

It is very likely the strike took place at the 1/50,000th of a second their hear't 'T' wave was at the crest. A hard srike at that time will cause the heart to stop beating, and as my surgeon tells mee, unless there is competent medical help there immediately to restart the heart death ensues.

It's just the sad reality for the circumstances. It doesn't matter who the person is how how they've trained.

Of course this is nothing any person can control. You don't know when that 1/50,000th of a second is there, nor can you control any strike to hit at that point on purpose.

Ascribing anything else is just more urban myth.

As Doc says, who anywhere has actually killed a person with a punch, and then killed multiple people with the same punch over and over to prove their skill versus serindipity.

No one that who!