Getting the wind knocked out of you is really just an extreme version of exhaling.
In some way, the volume of your chest cavity is suddenly and dramatically decreased. (This may be due to getting hit in the stomach, falling flat on your back or something else.) This sudden drop in volume causes a sudden increase in pressure, forcing air out of your lungs.
What makes this so dramatic, however, is biology.
Lungs are not large open bags, like balloons. Rather, they are more like sponges with an immense number of tiny sacs called alveoli. Normally, when you exhale, you only exhale a portion of the air in your lungs and the alveoli stay open.
However when the air is forced rapidly out of your lungs, these little sacs can collapse with the walls pressed against each other. Because these sacs are made of wet flesh, the sides stick together. As a result it is difficult to re-inflate those little sacs. That means that you must cause a greater than normal pressure change to allow enough air to be pushed into your lungs to re-inflate them.
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