For a very long time now, I have been surprised at just how quickly fans of the combative sports attach certain labels to shocking upsets, and perhaps no label is as grossly misused as the term “Fluke.”
Sure, this is nothing new; it’s been going on since people began to follow the sport of boxing, so many years ago, and in truth it isn’t going to go away, either.
But that doesn’t give it any real credibility, nor does it make it correct, because it is simply wrong.
Recently, fans have attached the term to fights such as GSP vs. Serra I, Andrei Arlovski vs. Roy Nelson, and so on and so forth.
Those fights were upsets, yes, but they were still fights, not flukes.
Neither GSP nor Roy Nelson had any illusions as to what they were walking into; they knew that their opponents were going to try to win any way they could, and that said opponents only had so many avenues to win: by decision, submission, TKO or KO.
Sure, it has been noted by many that GSP had distractions in his life leading into his first bout with Matt Serra, but that doesn’t change the fact that GSP knew that he could lose by any of the means fights are decided in the sport.
When he suffered that TKO loss, it was because Serra, based on his height and reach, was a bit more problematic that GSP anticipated; when Serra caught GSP with that shot, it was then that Serra really stepped up his game and finished the champ with poise and accurate power punching, and that is something that we don’t usually see when one man has the other hurt badly and is going in for the kill.
The same goes for Roy Nelson, who has made a living getting slugged in the face, often. His easy smile, beard and mullet may distract some, but his style of fighting is based on four pillars, and one of them is his chin.
When he got knocked out by Arlovski, it was because he was willing to test his chin against the fists of his opponent, and he lost in a big way.
That is not a fluke, that is just part of the game; anyone can get knocked out, and if you put your chin in the line of fire often enough, against heavy punchers, it is going to happen.
Then, there is the simple fact that both GSP and Nelson are students of the game—and truth be told I don’t know of any fighter who isn’t—and the notion of being defeated by KO is something that both men have faced not only in training but every previous time they had stepped into the cage.
Of course, I have been on board the “fluke” bandwagon before. I used to scream the term into the faces of anyone who saw validation in claiming that one fighter was no good simply because he was upset by another fighter.
But then I was called on it, and called hard.
It happened around the time Mike Tyson was upset and knocked out by Buster Douglas.
It was a fluke, I said. Couldn’t happen again in a million years, I said. Will never happen again, I said.
“Do you think Tyson studies tape?”
I think so, I replied. But maybe he didn’t this time.
“If he did, then he should have trained harder, and being lazy isn’t a fluke, it’s being lazy,” my tormentor said. “If he didn’t study tape, then he damn well should have. That isn’t a fluke, it’s being overconfident.”
You’re oversimplifying things, I tried to counter. No one thought Tyson was going to lose this fight. Douglas was hardly ranked.
“So, because the masses thought one way and were proved to be wrong, that makes it a fluke?”
I didn’t know what to say about that, because it sounded like I was walking into a trap.
“The masses like to be amazed, and if they are amazed enough and in a continuous fashion, it’s what they come to expect, and that lulls them into nothing more than making assumptions beforehand, and then proceeding from those assumptions before learning if they are correct or false. Pavlov’s dog was the same way, you know, but Pavlov not giving the mutt the scraps wasn’t a fluke, it was by design, just like it was by design when Douglas climbed up off the canvas and kept on fighting, and just like he kept on throwing punches. Fights happen by design and are based on a known design. The winner just happens to be the better designer.”
Each and every single fight is really its own story, and that is where the folly of the fluke comes into focus. What GSP or Nelson did before their fights with Serra and Arlovski are of no importance; it’s what they decided to do—how they fought these men—at the time that matters, and that is where they were defeated.
Everyone can fall into error and proceed from false assumptions, especially fighters who are as gifted as GSP or as tough as Nelson, but when those notions and assumptions are confounded, it is not a fluke but a simple byproduct of hubris if the loss comes because of a reliance on the past.
Flukes happen in other aspects of life, to be sure. I am not saying I don’t understand why people rush to use the word to explain why the upset happened (because we all crave explanations) or to label it (because we all love to label things); I understand this all too well.
I am saying that in a contest with weight classes, unified rules, referees in good standing and of high personal and professional accountability, known methods to achieve victory, training camps and trainers chosen by the fighter via free will, desire and dedication and the lessons of the past…well, someone is either going to win by decision, KO, TKO or submission, and there is no mystery to be found in that.
No fluke to be found, either.
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