I think the article starts out strongly, pointing out the recent short comings in fighting game sales and the historical precedent for the genre to collapse into a hardcore niche again as at the end of the 90s. To my knowledge there are at least 8 fighting game franchises that have been iterated on in the last year (plus several slightly less active titles that have active competitive scenes) and most of those franchises have been updating at least once per year. Because the differences between them are only apparent to hardcore gamers and game designers, the market for fighting games has already become over saturated and will probably implode soon unless somebody puts on the brakes. Of course people keep buying them so companies will keep pumping them out, but that's a different discussion.
Despite that strong diagnosis, the author's ideas for how to fix the fighting game genre are lackluster and frankly unimaginative. Essentially he just wants all Capcom fighters (I believe they're the only ones dropping the ball on what he prescribes) to have story modes and mission modes (that don't suck). Despite spotting the symptoms, the prescription completely misses the mark on what's wrong with fighting games and how to fix them.
The real problem with fighting games is a matter of focus. For a couple of decades now, the fighting game genre has tweaked, expanded, and retweaked the Street Fighter 2 formula over and over again. Two players creating spatial challenges for each other in real time. The problem is the focus of that endless tweaking is mainly in the combo systems. To me, this is what really drives players away. Combos are odd things to think about unless you study the gameplay system and really get down and dirty with training mode, something newbies are disinclined to do. If you want to appeal to more users (newbies), you need to expand on a part of SF2 that doesn't require so much practice.
If you were to ask me how to fix the fighting game genre, I would say change the way the spacing game works. Super Smash Bros broke it by adding in platforms (not to mention changing a lot of the underlying mechanics, but platforms are most relevant to the spacing game which is what fighting games are really about). I've always wanted to make a fighting game where the players can modify the gravity of their player (Metal Storm meets Guilty Gear). Something like that modifies the spacing game, and could breathe fresh air into a rotting genre. I don't think you would even need combos if you made the spacing more interesting, and combos are the biggest barrier to entry (solving another of the author's gripes about fighting games).
Of course, there are a number of other things you could mess with. You could change the ways the life bars work (Smash bros.), you could create a new visual style instead of recycling old ones (Guilty Gear, SF3, Skull Girls), or you could change the environment that the game functions in (another project I thought about for awhile was a sort of online poker version of a fighting game). But the space control game is the core of fighting games, and it's been untouched for far too long, if you want to refresh the fighting game genre, change the spacing game.
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