There's definitely cases where water can be used to smother fire (think: plunging something burning into a large body of water). But if you're throwing water onto a fire..
Consider that in order to smother a fire - to form an actual barrier between fuel and oxygen - water would have to remain liquid, which it can only do if its temperature stays below 100°C.
For water to stay below 100°C, whatever the water is in contact with also needs to be below 100°C.
So you can't actually permanently smother something with liquid water without also cooling it down to below 100°C.
An experiment you could try would be to maybe take a matchstick and soak it in some water. Then dry off the outside of it, so you can tell there's definitely no water covering the fuel of the stick. Then try to set fire to it.
Consider that in order to smother a fire - to form an actual barrier between fuel and oxygen - water would have to remain liquid, which it can only do if its temperature stays below 100°C.
For water to stay below 100°C, whatever the water is in contact with also needs to be below 100°C.
So you can't actually permanently smother something with liquid water without also cooling it down to below 100°C.
An experiment you could try would be to maybe take a matchstick and soak it in some water. Then dry off the outside of it, so you can tell there's definitely no water covering the fuel of the stick. Then try to set fire to it.