Well, a discussion about what is or isn't a "fluke" will almost inevitably bog down into semantics about what the word fluke means. The framework I'm using, at least, is based on the somewhat oversimplified, but I think mostly accurate, assumption that given two fighters' set of skills and abilities, each has a certain % chance of winning. As I'm using the term "fluke," it refers to any fight where a guy with a lower than 50% chance of winning does so. So it could be 49%, and it'd still fit under my argument.
As I said before, I think dominance is demonstrated over a career, or at least several years. Never in a single fight. Taking a probabilistic view of fights, it really highlights how impressive something like what Anderson Silva has achieved really is. To have a greater than 50% chance of winning 16 in a row, as Silva has in the UFC alone, you need a better than 95.7% chance of winning each one (if your odds of winning were the same for every single fight). That implies you're way better than most of your opponents, and his opponents are the rest of the best in the world at his weight. But most guys, even if they're the best in their division, could never manage a streak like that. You need to be more than the best. You need to be head and shoulders above your competition.
Right. That's more or less my point. If a guy shows, over and over again, that he's going to get the finish eventually, even if he falls behind, at some point it stops looking like a fluke when he does it, and starts looking like a fluke when he doesn't.
