Movement and hitting

My game I am currently trying to create is like a spinning top game where you get to control your spinning top and then battle each other to stay in the ring. The only problem I have at the moment is them hitting each other. I tried using hitTest but I couldnt get it to work but then saw a tutorial (on kirupa) about finding the distance using pythagoras. Any way this all worked fine up until the point where if you try to keep hitting the opponant when you are close to them the circles overlap and you get stuck inside each other :puzzled:
Is there any one that has any idea to how I could fix this problem.
As I cant explain things well I have posted the fla file.

cheers