I always warn my students that there are no techniques that are guaranteed to work, it depends on quite a few things: Your body dimensions relative to your opponent, the environment, surprise factor, skill of your opponent and much more. In a tournament, you usually have information about your opponent: style, previous record, preferences, etc. However, on the street, you have no such data at all – you are going in cold and the encounter is usually less than a minute.
I am not saying that training and learning doesn’t help you – it does. It helps you with awareness and reaction, your understanding of the risks involved, mechanics, distance, angles, your ability to adapt and much more. However, under no circumstances should you assume that you have overwhelming advantage over your opponent on the street.
Here is a video on how it may look like on the street:
Here is a link to an old post about bloopers in gymnastics and gymnastics where the environment is pretty static and yet mistakes still happens.
Bloopers
Exercise
What have you learnt from other people’s failures?