I find SF4 a lot easier to be offensive in actually. Try doing a 3 hit combo in an SFII game and see how much harder it is. :lol Much tighter execution windows in those games.
As for the topic, I think Oichi covered it pretty well already. Muscle memory is a type of memorization isn't it, too? There's too much room for semantics, you can bend this argument anyway you want really. Mario takes memorization too. Smash Bros does. Racing games do. I can't think of a game that doesn't use some sort of memorization. Part of the fun in fighting games IMO is learning how to do some stuff you can't do initially. Where is the reward if none of it comes down to execution except at the simplest degree? Imagine, for example, if someone like Sagat in SF4 was as easy to pilot as the best players make him look? His strengths become even more pronounced and everyone flocks to him because his huge combos are easy to pull, and the riskier ones that give him big advantages if you can do em perfectly are easy as well. At this point, there's no reason to
not to use him. And he's probably the worst "best fighter" ever. Motions are partly there to keep the broke from getting broker. These are competitive games as well; while the casual player base is larger, companies would be stupid to ignore the people who play their games the most.
The only large scale memorization that is actually grating is dial a combo, and even that was fun in its own way. Diff'rent strokes (I like me some Fulgore

).
And practicing does indeed equal memorization. How is it practice if you do something once? If you do it more than once, I would argue that you're doing it so you can whip it out later
because you have it memorized.
Semantics are a stupid thing
BTW, there's room for tons of fighting games. I play SF4 the most, but I played the hell outta Brawl, Melee, VF4, SC2-4, TvC, and others. Some at a higher level, some at a lower. And guess what? They're all fun. It comes down to your personal taste, guys - some people will like stuff that you don't. No need to change an existing franchise that hasn't proven stale when it still has an extremely viable player base.
And if you're playing it at a casual level, all of these mean nothing. Play the game, play one that has more suitable mechanics for you or play a different type of game altogether. Why force yourself to play something where one of the pillars is something you detest? Otherwise, put in the time like everybody else does/did. Everyone who plays games took their lumps at some point in time, one way or another.
(this post isn't towards anyone in particular, just have seen these threads a lot lately)