Totally agree about UFC 2.
The most effective strategy was throwing body jab, body straight, body jab, lead high kick LOL, you couldn't really punish anything, single strikes had absolutely NO weight, it was all about racking up the combo multiplier.
This game isn't perfect either, everyone throws the same combos, lower ranked fighters are still not really usable, etc there is a lot I would change, but talking only about striking it took a lot of steps in the right direction. If someone tried to throw stupid combos like body jab, body straight, body jab 1 uppercut will wreck them. Head movement and selective counters to the body can gas spammers hard, most things have a counter if you're good enough.