Many martial-like sports have a fundamental problem caused by this. In essence, there's a sequence: 1. are certain techniques that are likely to cause injury

Many martial-like sports have a fundamental problem caused by this. In essence, there's a sequence: 1. are certain techniques that are likely to cause injury even with proper protective gear, that sucks in a sport; 2. so we make rules to prohibit using such techniques; 3. so the meta changes so that realistic tactics (which obviously need to protect against the dangerous technique) become suboptimal, and the new meta is 'unnatural' as it leaves the fighters vulnerable to something that's prohibited but would be used in any real situation.