As Katt Williams once famously said, getting knocked unconscious isn’t actually that bad. You wake up feeling pretty well-rested and ready to go about the rest of your day. So long as there’s no long-term brain damage done, it’s no big deal.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case for 42-year-old Philip Evans, who wanted to know what it felt like to be knocked out so badly that he badgered his mate Ryan into punching him as hard as he could while they were out drinking together in Wednesfield, West Midlands.

Patrick Evans, 25, eventually gave in and punched Philip, killing him with a single blow to the head.

He pleaded guilty to manslaughter at Wolverhampton Crown Court and was today sentenced to 3 years in prison.

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Judge James Burbidge QC told Patrick:

He had asked at least one other person to try to knock him out on a previous occasion but that person had refused to do so, as you should have done.

You could have punched him in another part of the body and did not need to punch him as hard as you did, but he had requested you to do so.

Prosecutor Paul Spratt added:

He presented his chin. The defendant was reluctant to oblige but was egged on by the deceased and delivered a blow to the left side of the upper neck.

The deceased then apparently carried on drinking and said it had been a good punch as if nothing important had happened.

A short time later he put he collapsed onto the floor.

The defendant assumed it was the drink that had caused this when he got no response from his friend.

So basically, he ended up punching him in the side of the neck, which caused a haemorrhage and cardiac arrest that resulted in his death.

Jon Rowe, defending, said:

The single punch was not part of a fight. It was delivered at the request of the deceased in drunken horseplay.

There had been no falling out between them. Both were in a happy state of mind and neither could foresee the tragic outcome.

I suppose that’s the risk you run when you ask someone to punch you as hard as they can in your face. Whatever happened to Slaps or Knuckles? Those were both brutally painful games that didn’t put anyone’s life in danger. Sure you’d ended up with red-raw knuckles and your hands shivering from the trauma of being slapped 40 times in a row but at least there’s no death involved. Give me a game of Slaps over a game of Knockout any day.