Style and Realism in combat

Of the two proposals I mentioned in class, I think I'm going to go with the one concerning the merits of style and realism in video games and the merits of both. Specifically, I'm talking about martial arts.

This topic interests me because the field of martial arts in real life is full of, for lack of a better word, bullshit in general. Many people still believe that studying Kung Fu or ninjitsu for long enough will allow them to perform acts of superhuman strength, or move absurdly fast, except many of these schools (at least in the U.S.) are more or less scams, where the real, hard sparring martial arts/sports like simple boxing and wrestling are effective.

What I want to look into is why there is merit to both realism and style. People love to see stylish moves for entertainment value, but realism has its place too (Look at the Fight Night series, or the success of the new franchise UFC Undisputed). I also want to see why there is a relative lack of more realistic martial arts depictions in video games (the two aforementioned games being the only real "fighting" sims).