My hits are not in time with his crazy 'knockback' he is clearly flying haha anyway I'm not gonna argue, anyone with a brain can see he is hacking from that video...
No, it looks like he got knocked up an extra half a block. It's not a rare occurrence; I do it to players all the time.
Of course, when I hit someone higher like that, I monopolize on the moment and get a double hit/combo; I would not use the rod like you did in the video.
Also, it seems you were complaining about lag in the video. I don't know if that was just an invalid excuse for losing, but if you were actually lagging, the knockback would be less consistent.