Tech Throw/Throw escape
I forgot to mention throws in the whole equation of fighting games. Throws/holds are basically what they are, throwing/holding plus hitting people. There has been lots of contrevertsy on whether or not throws are cheap aka much like cheating or an easy way to earn a buck. The fact is, without throws you get a game like Killer Instinct where turtles are prevalent. The thing is what makes a throw seem cheap is the fact that for seemingly little effort, you get a lot of payback. A throw can vary in different strengths but often the throw damage is very significant which IMHO should be. Even though there seems to be little risk to pulling off a throw:
press towards + Any punch or kick > a weak punch or kick...once you are near the opponent
what the real risk is getting hit in order to get close to the person. IMHO it's stupid to think a throw is cheap because if there weren't any throws, a huge option of being offensive on an blocking opponent is thrown right out the window. Because a throw can penetrate anything short of an attack into your face.
In order to combat this lovely "throw friendlyness" I imagine SNK and Capcom came up with throw escapes/tech throws. Basically if you do a throw movement at the exact same time as the opponent throws you, you "escape" that throw with no damage. In some ways that evens out the playing field and speeds up gameplay so we a progression.

On the entire topic of throws being cheap in general, I would have to say it isn't cheap. The fact of the matter is, if the programmers who actually make the game, thought that somehow this technique was cheap...they by all means would take it out. As seen it really hasn't happened in any of the mainstream fighting games. The whole notion of "boo fucking whoo they get so much energy off by just pretty a button and one motion" is too narrow-minded.

If you were to realize that there is an element of risk and getting just punched in the face when one person tries to throw. Hell even nowadays there are ways to avoid throwing with tech hitting, dashing etc. There should be no excuse why one should whine about throws becasue in all cases it could be avoided.

Wake up attack
Ok let's just say you got knocked down and your opponent is basically standing (or jumping) right upon you, ready to kick your ass even before you got up. What do you do? The only options seemed to be to eat fist or foot, or just suck it up and block an attack, effectively giving your opponent the upper hand. This is why the Wake up was introduced. It was originally in SF2. Basically what is was is that you had one special move (or a few) that served the alternate purpose of being your "wake up" attack. Much like how you would "wake up" suddenly, this attack was used to basically send a back-the-fuck-up message to your opponent. Take for instance Ryu's shoryuken. That was his wake up attack. When an opponent was close enough and right as Ryu was getting up, he would perform his wake-up attack and hit the opponent. Now this attack almost made the entire process of getting up shortened because you interupted your getting up animation in exchange for a direct attack which is useful and quick. However make sure you are goint to hit or else the opponent could just wait you out; and hit you as you recover.
Meaty Attack
Meaty attack is basically the counter to the wake up attack. If you were so bold, and decided to attack a person, knowing that they might be waking up or not, the meaty attack is the way to counter any wake up attack. Basically it would hit at the exact moment the person recovers and hence nullify the wake-up attack. Of course the window of oppurtunity was incredibly small, but still could be done.

Safety Roll

This is very apparent in all forms of fighting games now. Basically a safety roll is a way to avoid people kicking your ass *again* with a meaty attack. If this continued, the opponent could keep you down on the groud, regardless if you had a wake-up in the process. The thing is if you do the QCD motion starting from either forward or backward you would "roll away" from where you would normally lay and recover This advantages of this is usually the recovery roll is also a good way to recover quickly with movement. However if the opponent is on to you, then you are screwed as well. It really depends when you want to just get hit or safety roll. In the case of the VS series, rolling often results in the character rolling an entire screen's length, very handy if you were getting your ass handed to you in a corner and you need to escape.