Knock them out for a loop?

Knock them out for a loop?

Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: Trump said, “We can knock them out for a loop.”

My comments:

Trump refers to Donald Trump, President of the United States. “Them” refers to Iranians. Trump made the above remark on April 7, 2026, while talking about forcing Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran closed the Strait, which carries some 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, after the United States and Israel launched a surprise attack a week earlier, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

While saying, “We can knock them out for a loop”, Trump is likening the entire Iranian population to a boxing opponent in the ring. In this boxing analogy, knocking an opponent out or down for a loop is to literally knocked the opponent down to complete a vertical 360, i.e. a circle.

“Loop” stands (or rather falls) for a backward summersault.

Only in this case, it is a summersault without the opponent ever leaving the floor. You know, the opponent gets hit hard on the head, falls backward and roll over heals over head to complete a full circle. So, it isn’t an elegant move, not like the regular high-flying summersaults performed by Olympic gymnasts.

In the boxing ring, the person being thrown for a loop suffers a devastating blow, of course. It’s a dizzying, destabilizing experience, causing the sufferer to see stars in his head, to lose the sense of direction and, in the worst cases, consciousness altogether.

And that’s what Trump means to convey, dealing devastating blows to the Iranian people – enough to kill their entire civilization.

Civilization is the very word he used. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

He wrote this as if it were an honorable thing to do. I mean, what an uncivilized thing to say. What a barbarous man.

Well, enough of Trump. Remember this, to throw or knock someone for a loop is to hit them hard – especially with a surprise attack that catches them cold (off guard) – causing great damage, confusion and destabilization.

Now, let’s read a few media examples for added clarity:

1. It’s never a good idea to underestimate a charming, nicely crafted trifle like Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown.” Movies that can so effortlessly fox trot you into another time and place for a few hours are rare enough these days. But I can’t remember the last time I settled in to enjoy a movie that I knew was going to please me with its gags, its breezy dialog, its satiny look, only to be knocked for a loop – to fall deeply, deeply in love – with a specific performance I couldn’t have been prepared for. “Sweet and Lowdown” is undeniably pleasant, but British actress Samantha Morton quietly explodes it: Her performance is like nothing I’ve seen in recent years.

If you were to break Allen’s career down into individual five-year rotations, “Sweet and Lowdown” would represent a sunny spot in the latest cycle, especially after the facile and bitterly misogynist “Celebrity” (1998) and the depressingly retrograde sexual politics of “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995). “Sweet and Lowdown” is the kind of effervescent entertainment Allen’s capable of making when he takes a breather from pawing desperately at his own neuroses, which ceased to be even remotely interesting long ago (except as they surface in wry amusements like 1993’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” where the fear-of-aging subtext enhances the story instead of sabotaging it).

“Sweet and Lowdown” follows the career of fictional ’30s jazz guitarist Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), a professional who’s cocksure of his own brilliance except when the subject of Django Reinhardt comes up: Then he turns to jelly, knowing that he’s simply no match. Ray is a cartoon sharpster with a pencil moustache and a pompadour that’s glazed and pouffed to an almost inhuman scale. Perpetually talking out of the side of his mouth, he’s loaded with white hipster jive – in fact, it’s the only way he knows how to communicate. He’s less a flesh-and-blood man than a conglomeration of bodacious one-liners (“First time I had sex, 7 years old”) who happens to play guitar like a fiend. On the road constantly, he’s an unapologetic ladies’ man, until he meets Hattie (Morton), a simple-minded, mute laundress. He falls in a kind of love with her – but even then, when he invites her to come along on the road with him, he’s got her changing flat tires as well as doing laundry (his excuse is that he doesn’t want to risk damaging his fingers).

- “Sweet and Lowdown”, by Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com, December 3, 1999.

2. The NBA was knocked for a loop with the news the league’s most valuable player, Kevin Durant, suffered a broken foot, the first major injury of his seven-year career.

Durant had surgery Oct. 16 for a “Jones” fracture – a broken bone at the base of his small toe on his right foot – and the Oklahoma City Thunder announced its All-Star forward could be out six to eight weeks.

Before his injury, the Thunder had been considered one of the favorites, along with Cleveland, Chicago and San Antonio, to win the NBA championship this season.

But the door has opened a bit in the super-competitive Western Conference, in which 10 teams could be pushing for a playoff spot. And the elite teams, such as the defending NBA champion Spurs, the Clippers and Golden State Warriors, are probably hoping to open a big enough lead in the standings before Durant returns to prevent the Thunder from securing home-court advantage in the West.

Certainly the Thunder will miss Durant’s league-leading 32 points per game and his 7.4 rebounds and 5.5 assists from last season. Russell Westbrook will be the leader for the Thunder while Durant recuperates.

- Kevin Durant’s injury a game-changer in NBA Western Conference, LATimes.com, October 25, 2014.

3. Even legends struggle to stay on top forever, and despite being one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars, a genuine war hero, and an Academy Award-winning actor, James Stewart had the sneaking suspicion that his career as an above-the-line leading man was on borrowed time by the end of the 1940s.

It’s easy to see why; he was completely absent from the silver screen for five years after enlisting to serve in World War II, and when he returned, his comeback vehicle bombed so badly at the box office that it knocked him for a loop, left him questioning himself, and even sent a production company under.

That film was, of course, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, but it was anything but an instant classic. It wasn’t until decades after its release that it became a staple of the festive calendar, leaving Stewart to question if he’d ever be able to buffer his star back into a place where it would shine like it used to.

His next picture, Magic Town, was also a flop, while subsequent outings in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, HC Potter’s You Gotta Stay Happy, and King Vidor’s On Our Merry Way also underperformed. Things were looking grim, which pushed the actor into throwing the most important Hail Mary of his career.

It goes without saying that Stewart’s onscreen persona was not that of a grizzled, hardened, and rough-hewn antihero. He was known as the nicest guy in Hollywood for many good reasons, so eyebrows were naturally raised when he signed on to headline a gritty, revisionist, and noir-tinged western.

And yet, Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73 turned out to be a masterstroke. It’s a favourite of Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Quentin Tarantino, and not only did it prevent Stewart’s ongoing slide down the industry ladder, it was a watershed moment for how performers were compensated.

Reflecting on a decision that was a huge risk at the time, the star called the film “a desperation move that proved a lifesaver,” one that pushed him into a new era. “It opened up sort of a new area for me in the picture business, in the type of story I could do,” he explained. “If you’re able to get the story started at a time when that trend is starting up, you’re in very good shape. That’s what I got a feeling would happen when I got Winchester at that particular time.”

It was the first of eight times he worked under Mann’s direction, and it was years ahead of its time, laying down a marker for the revisionist western, an offshoot of a cinematic staple that wouldn’t become commonplace until the 1960s. All that, and he made history, too.

Winchester ’73 was the first major production to pay an actor a percentage of its profits instead of an upfront salary, with Stewart lowering his usual fee from $200,000 in exchange for taking a cut of the box office receipts, which was estimated to have netted him upwards of $600,000 when all was said and done. As far as desperation moves go, it was a pretty good one.

- How a “desperation move” gave James Stewart the role that “proved a lifesaver” for his career, FarOutMagazine.com, February 5, 2026.

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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.

（作者：张欣）