Answer the bell?

Reader question:

Please explain “answer the bell”, as in the following: “I was really proud how many times we answered the bell tonight and hit big shots when we needed them.”

My comments:

In the above example, it means that every time the challenge was on, they were ready for it, and they delivered by making timely shots – big (important) shots.

“Answer the bell” is an expression borrowed from boxing. In the game of boxing, a bell is used to signal the beginning and end of each and every round. Amateur boxers, such as the Olympians play three rounds, but professional fighters fight as many as 10, 12 and sometimes (rarely now but often in the past) 15 rounds.

Boxers play on a canvas, a square platform circled by ropes. At the beginning of each round, the bell sounds and the two boxers hop out of their corner, advance to the middle of the ring and proceed to fight.

At the end of each round, lasting three minutes, the bell rings again and each player goes back to his corner, where trainers and helpers let him sit on a stool to rest and recuperate.

At the beginning of the next round, the bell sounds again – and the boxer rises up to resume the fight.

That’s where the express “answering the bell” comes from – the boxer “answers the bell” to fight another round. If he fails to rise up at the sound of the bell, you know, if he’s too tired or hurt to resume fighting, he would lose the match.

That’s how, I recall, the great Muhammad Ali – the Greatest, in fact, if you asked the man himself – lost a match. That was a match against Larry Holmes and that match was in 1980, when Ali, at the age of 38, was long past his prime. He lost the 15-round matchup to a younger, stronger and hungrier former sparring partner Holmes after 10 rounds. Too tired, beaten up and defenseless, Ali, at the order of his manager, did not leave the stool at the sound of the bell for the 11th round.

A terrible scenario, for me. I was pained, saddened, stunned, flatly knocked out by the sequence of events I saw on the small screen. I remember the pain vividly because it must have been one of the first great sporting events to be broadcast live in China (thanks to the reform and opening up policy pioneered by Deng Xiaoping) and I, then 14, had only come to watch Ali win. Instead, I saw my man beaten, battered and helpless. Each time he hobbled, I wished Ali would this very instant deliver one of his stinging combinations to knock out Holmes, who was unbeknownst to me, in stunning fashion. But alas, it was not to be. Ali had no chance – “None of the three voting judges gave Ali a round,” the New York Times (October 3, 1980) reported later.

Anyways, Ali lost a match by not answering the bell.

Hence the idiom. If one answers the bell, one is ready to face up a challenge, in other words ready to fight.

Or, to use another cliché, if one answers the bell, they “rise to the occasion”.

Here are two recent media examples:

1. A Carolina football team held together by spit and tape managed to go 7-5 in the regular season. Many may not comprehend how big an accomplishment this is.

“This football team, in my 37 years of coaching, is going to be one of my proudest group of guys that I have ever been around, for the way that they have answered the bell every single week, good times, bad times, tough times,” UNC coach Butch Davis said.

“These are some great kids, kids who refused to surrender, refused to use any excuses.” The team has been torn from multiple directions, was humiliated by scandal and watched its roster ground to rice paper. The players never stopped competing.

- CarrboroCitizen.com, December 10, 2010.

2. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra began the process of enjoying what James had to offer this summer. They went to lunches and talked about anything and everything, though largely not about basketball. Spoelstra wanted to know what made him tick, what he liked, what he disliked.

He wasn’t surprised by much of what he’s learned in the months that have followed, except perhaps one thing.

“He’s the first one,” Spoelstra said. “In training camp, he was the first player at breakfast, usually is the first player to get to the arena. He likes extra time to prepare. Everything we do, he likes to arrive early. He takes this very seriously. If you think about it, he’s been under this microscope since he was in seventh, eighth grade—and he’s always been able to answer the bell of expectations.”

- After ups and downs, LeBron James says 2010 was memorable, AP, December 31, 2010.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.