As someone who has trained in MMA extensively, "the greats" tend to be those who embody this for long whiles in their careers before eventually (and generally, inevitably) regressing to the mean.<p>Anderson Silva, Matt Hughes, BJ Penn are all common names to MMA devotees (or at least were as recently as a few years ago) , and each of them share the same trait -- they win when they aren't supposed to.<p>I've never been remotely as good as any of them (nor Ronda Rousey), but eventually, when you defy the statistics for long enough, you become looked at as a modern-day Superman. Anderson Silva, for example, ran a hugely long undefeated streak in which he not only bested his opponents, but often embarrassed them before suddenly falling off the mark twice, and to the same opponent.<p>As a result, he has fallen from grace as the once "best pound for pound fighter in the world" to almost average, depending on who you're talking to. Regardless, his fight record[1] tells the story of a man who simply knows how to win, except against Chris Weidman, and as such, is worth fearing, despite being older than average and much, much better than average.<p>The point that I appear to be dancing around though, is that a guy on a 10-fight win streak seems invincible, while a guy on a 2-fight losing streak seems positively wimpy by comparison. Looking at the fighter's record on the whole is probably the best gauge of their talent, but as your statistical record approaches the mean, so does the level of fear you might otherwise instill, commensurately.