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Originally Posted by Firefoot
From "The Council of Elrond": Sauron killed Elendil and Gil-galad, but at the same time they overthrew Sauron - "killing" him, per se. So Sauron was already overthrown by the time Isildur cut off ring and finger.
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Firefoot, that depends on your interpretation of whether Sauron was killed, or that Mordor, and hence the Dark Lord, was just defeated (overthrown). We don't have enough to go on to be sure. Sauron was probably subjected to being attacked by lord after lord, slaying them all but sustaining injury, until he at last became physically weaker, and then finally caved in to Isildur, who accurately landed a blow to remove the large finger (assuming that Sauron was a good deal bigger than a normal man).
That said, how did the likes of Elendil even have the courage to confront him? If Sauron landed a mighty blow to them, they would be sent yards into the air!Mentally he would be too much I would have thought, hence a lucky blow by Isildur might come into the equation.
However, as Tolkein put it, Isildur took the Ring from Sauron as though he himself had not been involved in a titanic battle with the Dark Lord. So its might appear that Sauron could well have been on the verge of dying or already dead just before the Ring was taken, although for me that seems very hard to imagine whilst he still had the Ring.