Martial Arts Fantasy Origin

There is a new vocabulary developing on the internet for talking about how effective various martial arts are. The latest development, which I for one agree with, is how much "fantasy" has creeped into any given specific martial art. From my perspective as a consumer advocate, I have a very clear vision of exactly how martial arts get infected with high levels of fantasy.  Probably the most classic example of a fantasy-rife technique found in many martial arts styles is countering a punch using a wrist lock:

There is no problem to most of the individual steps this Sensei describes: keeping good posture at close range, grabbing someone's arm, dropping your weight, flanking your opponent as they attack you, etc. Almost every little component of this technique works, yet if you have ever tried to use this whole technique in free sparring, you know that it almost never works. Even though the technique happens in a brief period of time, it is made of numerous little steps that have to be done in exactly the right order. Free Sparring teaches us that the opponent has an agenda as well, so that techniques must be simple in order to actually work.

People have been talking about how "martial arts that do training with resistance or sparring are the best." As this vocabulary has been developing, "training with resistance" used to actually mean free sparring specifically. Now "training with resistance" seems to mean "everything that makes a martial art good, but which is not actually free sparring." Here's the different kinds of martial arts training people are talking about here:

• Practicing a technique in a drill while someone resists you. You could be throwing a boxing jab at someone who is practicing head movement. You could be doing a kata while someone times you for speed, pressing you to go faster and faster, kicking a heavy bag in Muay Thai for example. You could be doing stop and go "fighting" like in fencing or stationary push hands. None of this is any kind of "sparring," it's all drills. It's all Kata to teach martial art theory.
• Focused sparring is where no one is taking turns, but where only a few techniques are allowed while sparring. Positionals in BJJ is an example. Playing "king of the mountain" in wrestling (trying to get each other out of a circle) is another example. Sparring with only a jab in boxing is another example of this. This is one of the very best way to teach individual techniques and develop a practical understanding of the theory behind the techniques, BUT IT IS NOT FREE SPARRING.
• Free sparring is continuous, and has the least possible outside interference. No one is dictating which moves you can do within your over all ruleset you are sparring with. Though it can have varying levels of contact and intensity, free sparring is where you learn to react against unscripted attacks, and where you find out exactly what works for you want what doesn't. The elite quality of both BJJ and Muay Thai has everything to do with their culture around Free Sparring.

In other words there is a Yin/Yang balance to martial arts training: theory vs. practice. Everything that is not Free Sparring is Theory, and the ONLY way to build solid practical skill is by complementing that Theory with Practice aka Free Sparring. The Yin is the Theory/Kata/drills/focused sparring, while the Yang is the Free Sparring.

But here's where the FANTASY comes from: while Theory/Kata informs Free Sparring, the Free Sparring in turn informs the Kata/Theory! What happened in Aikido that made it mostly fantasy based, is that the founder of Aikido was a pacifist, and this pacifism  discourages Free Sparring. Aikido's practical side is largely neglected because the people practicing Aikido do not realize which techniques are the most important, because they do not do Free Sparring.  All Martial Arts Change over time: All techniques are always becoming better or worse in their effectiveness, so that if a martial art is not sufficiently investing time in free sparring, that arts Kata/Theory will become less valuable over time.