Did you ever actually see somebody “die” from that? I always felt that it was a simple (perhaps painful) paralysis, and she was bluffing about the death part. Which would be hilarious. “What? Die from it? Nah. They’re just paralyzed. Actually, it also only lasts for about twenty seconds, so I just wait for it to almost wear off and smack them a couple times, and they can breathe again. Suckers.”
I think the technical term you’re looking for is “broken neck.”
Yeah, that one hurts. It’s not a legal target area in point sparring or American kickboxing, but it’s a legal kick in International rules kickboxing and Muay Thai, and a Thaiboxer can just drop you with it. There was a K1 match a while ago where the fight was called in the first round because the guy just couldn’t stand up after taking some hard shots to to the thigh.
Pressure point strikes are not allowed under UFC rules.
Re: Dillman - I’m getting a bit anecdotal with references here, but there was a news crew that took a BJJ guy over to a Dillman seminar and while Dillman had no trouble “knocking out” the guys who paid cash money to get into the seminar, the BJJ guys did their best not to laugh when Dillman did this thing on them and they felt no effects.
Re: other pressure points, I’ve been hit just above the bicep before and damn does it hurt. There’s an apocryphal story going around the dojo where a student was giving the lesson about how this can be a knockout blow (used in FMA IIRC) and one guy got hit, walked around shaking his arm going, “damn that hurts, do it again” and then went stiff, cracking his head on the concrete floor. I wasn’t there, but have no reason to think the people who told me (who were there) were lying.
Strictly speaking, I suppose it’s not a KO the same way knocking someone on the button would be…
Re: Manidble Claw - this move was originally developed by the guy the TV show The Fugitive was based on. He was unable to get a job after the trial and acquittal, so he became a pro wrestler and told audiences his knowledge of dentistry allowed him to devise the most painful finishing hold ever.
ROFLMAO…sorry
Finally…a doctor in the house!
They were allowed at one time. In fact, I can remember a Dilman black belt getting beaten up pretty badly by Remco Pardoe. One of the reasons they are not allowed now is that the UFC wanted to throw the Nevada Gaming Comission a bone as part of the negotiations to get licensed. As one of the UFC officials said, disallowing pressure point strikes didn’t change the outcome of the fights (because pressure points are nonsense), but made them look like they were negotiating in good faith.
Pressure points are allowed in other UFC-type events, e.g. PrideFC in Japan. No one uses them, because pressure points are useless.
Also, I saw Igor Vocachychn deliver the worst beating I’ve ever seen another man receive in a no-rules cage match in Brasil. His opponent was a world-renouned Dim Mak “master” (whose name I’ve forgotted, but his nickname was something like “Professer Muerte”). During the fight I honestly thought the Dim Mak master was going to die. This was a no-rules event; no judges, no gloves, pressure points, groin shots, biting, head butting were all allowed. There were people there who actually thought the Dim Mak master had a chance of winning because of the lack of rules. Just goes to show, some people will believe anything.
More important here, I think, is the number of fights that don’t end from kicks to the thigh.
Having boxed, I can let everyone on this forum know the secret to the liver “pressure point”. Don’t tell anyone, because this is top secret ninjer stuff. Here goes:
Hiit the guy really really hard in the liver.
That’s the secret. Not sure why anyone would consider it a pressure point. A light touch there isn’t going to do anything to anyone.
As to your other examples, the armpit one, the sternum one, some others. I train BJJ and have rolled with a guy who tried those techniques. They were mildly uncomfortable, but they wouldn’t slow me down for a second in a fight.
On a side note, it took the guy almost a year to give up on trying PP stuff, which is odd, because every time he tried to drive his knuckle into my sternum I armbarred him immediately. I guess some people learn more slowly than others.
That’s true. Most pros are tough enough to take a few. Still, If a Thaiboxer is throwing a hard shot to my thigh, I’d rather block it with my shin than take it in the thigh.
That’s my point, though, that striking a “pressure point” isn’t about a mystical knowledge of the body’s energy meridians. It’s as mundane as knowing where and how to hit someone in a way that’s going to hurt them, like a groin kick, or an eye gouge, or a rabbit punch.
Think of it this way: when you were learning to box, you were learning the body mechanics of transferring as much force as you could into your punch. Anyone can throw a punch, but you’ve learned how to put your whole body into that left hook. When you say “hit the guy really really hard in the liver,” your “really really hard” is now going to be much harder than the average guy off of the street. Whereas the average guy is going to throw a punch to the stomach that can be shaken off, you can throw a punch that has a chance of penetrating to the liver.
I train BJJ too, or more specifically MMA and Kajukembo. I think you’re thinking of pressure points like the finger dig behind the ear, or the knuckle dig to the sternum, or the elbow dig to the inner thigh to pass the guard. That last one is a particularly bad example, because if you’re any good at all you’ll just ignore it. My guard isn’t totally impassable, but I have a pretty good one, and I take it as a point of pride to not let it get passed that way. A guy can dig his elbows all the way to China on my inner thighs, but if that’s all he does he’ll never get me to turn loose of my guard. So on that, we agree (except that I might make an exception for the clavicle grab).
That’s not exactly what I’m talking about, though. “Pressure points” is probably a misleading term; “pressure sensitive areas” or “vital points” or something of that nature would probably be better. At any rate, I don’t mean tapping or digging, I mean striking it with full force to a concentrated area. Digging a thumb into an armpit isn’t going to do much, but a very, very hard and concentrated punch from a guy who knows what he’s doing can make you see stars and feel like you’re going to pass out. It’s not magic, it’s just hitting somebody with good technique someplace where it’s going to hurt really badly.
I hope we’re not about to veer into the territory of “Combatives vs. Combat Sports,” the bane of martial arts message boards everwhere. 
Apologies if this has been mentioned already as I was just skimming the thread.
I did a bit of forensic medicine as an outside subject in Uni and they talked about the possibility of a blow to the Vagus nerve in the neck (which runs between your jugular and your carotid artery) interfering with the signal that regulates heartbeat and causing death by what is known as an instantaneous neurological cardiac arrest (or INCA for you abbreviation fans). The chances of picking the right spot, and hitting it at “right” moment to intentionally trigger this would be near zero I would imagine.
This didn’t stop a lecture hall full of mature-minded 2nd year uni students jabbing each other randomly in the throat with bunched fingertips and yelling “VAGUS!!!” at each other for the following few months.
All hail Scotland’s bright intellectual future, hope none of these guys end up as my doctor… 