Fluke victories = No such thing.

[daniel san]

If you can't comprehend the fact that some wins are pure flukes and some aren't, you're either not very intelligent and/or not very analytical.

Serra beating GSP is one of the biggest flukes of all time. If these guys fought 10 other times, GSP would be victories in every single fight. It's a fluke when we know a fighter as far superior than the one he lost to and that if they were to meet 100 times, the fighter would win all of them.

It's too early to tell if JDS's win over Cain was a fluke, and I highly doubt that it is. It's pretty moronic to continue discussing this as we'd probably need a third fight to see how it will go.

 

[georgejjr]

Definitely some fluke victories

Serra vs GSP.

So you think if I was there against GSP, that if I threw enough punches I'd roll a natural 20 and get that critical hit? That any of us could knock out Cain or GSP if we threw enough punches (ie one will be the lucky random punch that gets through)?

MMA isn't dungeons and dragons, there are no random dice rolls. Serra trained for years, has the physical talent and skills to take advantage of an opportunity. That's not a fluke, that's preparation meeting opportunity. People who think there are lucky punches spend too much time playing video games, where the computer uses random numbers to generate outcomes. That's not what happens in a fight.

Now I'd pick GSP to beat Serra 99 times out of a 100. But that doesn't mean that the Serra win was a fluke (ie some random chance), just that it requires rare circumstances to happen. Serra intended that punch to land, he trained hard to be able to throw that punch and with enough force for it to do what it did. The only luck involved was that Serra had the discipline to train for years to be able to pull it off when the circumstances arose.

 

[kalosmemi**]

According to the OP if I hit five hole in one's in a row it's not a fluke because I intended to hit hole in one's.

:icon_lol:

It's good to see that SOME people are smart enough to see reality.

 

[kalosmemi**]

So you think if I was there against GSP, that if I threw enough punches I'd roll a natural 20 and get that critical hit? That any of us could knock out Cain or GSP if we threw enough punches (ie one will be the lucky random punch that gets through)?

MMA isn't dungeons and dragons, there are no random dice rolls. Serra trained for years, has the physical talent and skills to take advantage of an opportunity. That's not a fluke, that's preparation meeting opportunity. People who think there are lucky punches spend too much time playing video games, where the computer uses random numbers to generate outcomes. That's not what happens in a fight.

Now I'd pick GSP to beat Serra 99 times out of a 100. But that doesn't mean that the Serra win was a fluke (ie some random chance), just that it requires rare circumstances to happen. Serra intended that punch to land, he trained hard to be able to throw that punch and with enough force for it to do what it did. The only luck involved was that Serra had the discipline to train for years to be able to pull it off when the circumstances arose.

That's not what a fluke is you fucking moron.

Admitting that GSP would beat Serra 99/100 is a roundabout way of saying that it was a fluke.

Good God.

 

[BEER]

Benji Radach lost to Danny Lafever in what can only be described as a fluke.

No one will ever consider Radach to be top flight, but he's a good fighter with some impressive victories. He steps into the ring with a guy who has never fought or trained in Mixed Martial Arts.

Radach got one punched. Game over. That outcome wouldn't be likely if they fought 99 more times. But it happened. Flukes happen.

That said, JDS knocking out Cain isn't really a fluke. That fight really only ends two ways: JDS by knockout in the first two or three rounds, or Cain by a dominating decision.

 

[ticho123]

Of course there's such a thing as fluke victories you douche. What about injuries or DQs? Also some legit victories can have a flukish quality in that they say very little about how a rematch would go.

 

[D.R.H.]

So you think if I was there against GSP, that if I threw enough punches I'd roll a natural 20 and get that critical hit? That any of us could knock out Cain or GSP if we threw enough punches (ie one will be the lucky random punch that gets through)?

MMA isn't dungeons and dragons, there are no random dice rolls. Serra trained for years, has the physical talent and skills to take advantage of an opportunity. That's not a fluke, that's preparation meeting opportunity. People who think there are lucky punches spend too much time playing video games, where the computer uses random numbers to generate outcomes. That's not what happens in a fight.

Now I'd pick GSP to beat Serra 99 times out of a 100. But that doesn't mean that the Serra win was a fluke (ie some random chance), just that it requires rare circumstances to happen. Serra intended that punch to land, he trained hard to be able to throw that punch and with enough force for it to do what it did. The only luck involved was that Serra had the discipline to train for years to be able to pull it off when the circumstances arose.

That's what a fluke is chief.

 

[BEER]

I'm not disagreeing with you, but does that make Fedor-Werdum a fluke? Even though its a legit win for Werdum, Fedor would not jump into his guard again...and would probably fight him like he did Monson...

Where do we draw the line.

That's a bad comparison simply because Fedor fought the way he always fights and lost.

Whereas Cain was tentative [whether via an injury or otherwise] and paid the price for fighting differently than he usually does.

A fluke also doesn't necessarily mean the wrong man won, either. Just HOW the victory happens. For instance, I would favor Shinya Aoki over Antonio McKee 99% of the time. The fact that he stopped a guy with an overhand right is a bit of a fluke, no? A guy who literally has zero wins due to strikes [outside of doctor's stoppage] finishing a guy with only two stoppage losses in 35 fights with a single right hand? That's a fluke. Aoki was going to win that fight either way, but it's HOW he won that makes it a fluke.

 

[georgejjr]

That's not what a fluke is you fucking moron.

Admitting that GSP would beat Serra 99/100 is a roundabout way of saying that it was a fluke.

Good God.

Oddly enough, as soon as you resorted to an insult it became obvious you have nothing useful to say. Its always the last resort of someone who can't make a rational argument.

If the question of 99/100 is brought up in an intelligent manner, I'll explain why its not the same (though anyone with even first year statistics already knows the answer).

 

[rlm81]

JDS is a great striker but crushing your opponent in the first 60 seconds of the match causes a problem. There hasn't been enough fight time (sampling) to tell if that was a statistical anomaly or tremendous skill.

I couldn't say whether JDS' win over Cain in the first match was a fluke or not. He had gone through numerous opponents and had several KOs which would indicate it was a skill shot, but Cain had never lost so, in my mind, it was inconclusive.

In the rematch it was clear that Cain's wrestling and cardio were superior as we got to see a very large number of wrestling attempts. We also got to see that JDS has very good TDD (thwarted 67% of the takedown attempts) and tremendous ability to soak damage.

Let me quote someone who knows a thing or two about striking and strongly disagrees that JDS/Cain 1 was a fluke

Of the 7 significant strikes that Dos Santos scored in his fight with Cain Velasquez, two were powerful right straights to the body, and one was a probing jab to the solar plexus and one was a front kick to the midsection. This simple attacking of Velasquez's left floating rib with Dos Santos' right straight was enough to draw the inexperienced Velasquez's hand out of position. Having crouched and ducked his head twice for a right straight to the body, the third time Dos Santos dropped his weight, he was able to connect a swinging right over the top of Velasquez's lowered defense. It was far from a perfect punch, in fact it was technically hideous - connecting with the thumb and little else, at the end of a fully extended arm - but the set up was world class.

 

[blingking]

Belfort/Couture II was a fluke and you can't argue otherwise.

 

[Soul Slasher**]

It was the perfect gameplan for a guy with 0 wins via strikes to knock out a guy who's never lost via strikes? Next you're going to tell me that Liz Carmouche's gameplan is to arm-bar Ronda, right? She'll never see it coming! HAHAHA!

Right, so every time that the absolute least likely scenario happens, it's the "perfect gameplan"??

Yeah, I'm going to go out and call bullshit on that.

Serra circle around GSP using head movements to catch him from angle shots while trying to avoid kicks.

IT WORKED...

Go train and then you may now what I am talking about. Especially considering that the strategy was also explained after the fight, which is evident during the fight to those that knows something about Boxing techniques.

Just because it was GSP, you called it a fluke. It shows that your opinion here is more emotionally based rather than logically.

 

[Soul Slasher**]

That's what a fluke is chief.

GSP vs Serra wasn't a fluke.

The term "fluke" is used by dick riders to help justified their fighters losing a fight in an upset. Even though the underdog work very hard to lay out his strategy. That term takes away from the underdog's hard work achievement.

It is something chicks would say. Then again you tend to find dudes with the biggest feminine characteristics in MMA boards.

 

[bubkusjones]

Serra circle around GSP using head movements to catch him from angle shots while trying to avoid kicks.

IT WORKED...

Go train and then you may now what I am talking about. Especially considering that the strategy was also explained after the fight, which is evident during the fight to those that knows something about Boxing techniques.

Just because it was GSP, you called it a fluke. It shows that your opinion here is more emotionally based rather than logically.

:icon_lol:

Yes, it worked. Yes, Matt Serra put in the performance of his career. Doesn't change that it was a one-in-a-million chance. The stars just happened to align for Matt Serra that night. For as good as Matt Serra was, GSP not taking the fight seriously had more of an effect on the outcome than anything else. Georges was caught up in his own hype coming off the Hughes win, and was convinced that if he could do that to Matt Hughes, Matt Serra (a smaller guy who only got a title shot for winning a TV show) wasn't worth training for.

You take that best-ever Matt Serra and put him against GSP from any other fight and GSP gets his hand raised (whether Serra can walk out of the cage afterwards is up for debate). How can we assume this? GSP came back to break Matt Serra in the rematch, and then put on a clinic against every opponent since, facing much more technical, accurate and powerful strikers as well as larger and craftier grapplers.

In the 200 minutes that GSP has fought since the Serra loss, he has logged about two minutes of being in legitimate danger (the only other danger came from Jake Shields' repeated eye poking), which came in the form of a headkick from Condit. He recovered and proceeded to spend the rest of the fight making Carlos' face look like hamburger. It was arguably GSP's best performance in years, and that was after a 19 month layoff which included a knee surgery that has been known to seriously hinder athletic performance (and on occasion, end careers).

I don't see how you can take their first fight as anything but an anomaly, a result not consistent with either of their careers prior or since. Unless, of course, you're trying to convince people that Matt Serra is a better fighter than GSP, despite losing more frequently to lower quality opponents and GSP going on a tear that has ranked him as one of the top Pound For Pound fighters. If that's what you're trying to do, have fun with that. Just shows that, for all your attempts to peg me as going on emotion rather than logic, you're guiltier of it than you accuse me of.

 

[Soul Slasher**]

:icon_lol:

Yes, it worked. Yes, Matt Serra put in the performance of his career. Doesn't change that it was a one-in-a-million chance..

After reading the rest of your post, all I saw was excuses, hypothetical "if they fought this and this much out of that much than GSP would win this much" and more excuses.

I am just focusing on that fight. Serra came with the perfect game plan and won. You say it is an abnormally. Yet what you are really saying is that GSP did not improved then since that fight.

It is a fact that GSP changed his style drastically after that fight. He has become more cautious. Before he would be more aggressive with his kickboxing.

GSP also develop a strong wrestling skillset in him between the time he fought Serra and then the rematch.

By fact is, GSP was not flawless. No one is. Even a underdog can figure out the perfect game plan to beat a greater fighter. This is MMA, which is a sport, which deals greatly with strategies. This is not a bar fight.

 

[The Clinch]

So Belfort beating Couture via nearly slicing off his eyelid (accidentally) doesn't count?

 

[eworden78]

Ok, so here is my super long explanation that should address everything in this thread.

Luck is relative. The result of any event that does not have a definite outcome (<100% probability), may be considered lucky, providing that the outcome has some benefit to the observing party.

A fluke does not necessarily need to be "lucky". The two terms are not inherently linked. A fluke does not necessarily benefit anyone. However, a "fluke win" is always lucky as a win is inherently beneficial to the winner.

The issue with defining something as a "fluke" is that "fluke" is subjective. A fluke is technically any chance occurrence; it does not necessarily need to be a rare chance just anything that happens as a product of chance. Therefore, if we are going to argue on a semantics level, every fight is a "fluke". The subjectivity comes in when we try to apply the word in a meaningful way. Some might consider any upset a fluke, while others might only use the term in regards to some 1 in a 1000 type of occurrence.

So in short, luck is relative, a fluke is subjective, and so we will never agree on what a "lucky win" or "fluke win" is.

So why bother even labeling a win in such a way?

The essence of sports is to pit competitors against each other to see how individuals (or teams) stand in relation to their peers. Whether fan, analyst, trainer, or competitor, the reason people watch and/or compete is to be able learn more about the competitor&#8217;s ability.

In any field when you are record and sampling events, to make a determination, it is of utmost importance to identify which events are anomalous, or of low probability. Some events in a sample group give a better representation of typical results and therefore have more bearing on the final determination. This can be easily identified by increasing your sample size.

However, in MMA we have a limited sample size, fighters can only fight a limited amount of times against a limited variety of opponents.

So when someone calls a fight a "fluke win" they are just saying that the result of the fight was a factor of probability, and thus does not give a definitive assessment of the competitors respective abilities.

As I said, this is all subjective and relative. Nevertheless, it is naive to believe that all results are equally definitive.

 

[IDL]

There is no such thing as a lucky punch if you really think about it.

There is no such thing as a PURELY lucky punch, but there are punches with a large luck factor involved. When the luck factor becomes large enough, it can be deemed a lucky punch.

 

[Soul Slasher**]

There is no such thing as a PURELY lucky punch, but there are punches with a large luck factor involved. When the luck factor becomes large enough, it can be deemed a lucky punch.

Give me an example.

For me a "lucky punch" was when Liddell KOed Couture in both the second and third fight. Couture was hurt and his equilibrium was out of wax after he got poke in the eye by Liddell in the second fight. Right as Liddell knock out Couture, Couture was holding on to the fence to gain his balance before he got hit.

In the third fight, Couture slipped as he was bobbing on the inside for a hook. As soon as he slipped, Liddell caught him with A hook that dropped Couture.

Those are good examples of "lucky punches". Another good example of a "lucky punch" is Sonnen catching an unbalanced Silva with a left in the fifth round.

 

[glennrod]

coleman vs shogun 1 is the very definition of a fluke victory