No you have to play a balancing game with the left stick where once you have the meter centered on the screen you have to push the right stick at the precise moment the light is right in the middle. I've let the CPU knock me down a few times to see how it plays out when you have good health early on as opposed to the 2nd or 3rd KD where you're close to death. It seems that the less health you have when you go down the harder it is to balance and get up, at least that's what I sensed. That's good because if it was the same difficulty everytime to get up you may never knock anybody out online who are really good at it. So I'm hoping that it works out well in the full game so if it's the 10th round and you're just pummeling the guy and knock him down it's gonna take alot of skill for him to get back up.
I know alot of early reveiwers said that they find it difficult to balance it but from an early KD I have had no problem getting up.