The essay you're referring to is written by a man named David Sirlin, and he runs a website where he talks about his ideas on game design[1]. He's perhaps most known in the community for helping to bring to light the concept of "yomi," (lit. "reading"), the process of taking actions specifically to get a grasp on your opponent's thought process and be able to predict it. To him, that's the one pure essence of fighting games (though this view is not universally held).
In fact, he's already done something like you describe. He designed a card game named, appropriately enough, Yomi[2], that attempts to bring the core of a fighting game into a card game format. Much like in fighting games, attacking beats throws, throws beat blocking, and blocking beats attacks. Hitting a player allows you to attempt to combo them, but the opponent can play cards (that may be bluffs) which can break the combo.
He did something similar with chess, calling it Chess 2, though it's much less popular than Yomi.
I would have liked to select another name for its underlying mechanics, but I'm not knowledgeable enough.
That has a lot less appeal than fast paced, cool looking ninjas kicking each other - hence why video games are an art form and not just intellectual exercise.
In fighting games, competitive players tend to concentrate on the structure behind punches and suffering. They see a game of anticipation, dexterity, and timing. They talk about hit boxes, priorities, frame advantage… Those players would probably enjoy an abstract version of those fighting games.
Hmm… we could even test that: could we make a game that have a similar structure to Mortal Kombat, only it doesn't even look like 2 characters punching each other to death?