To be fair, i think the point of contention for aikido (and for tai chi and things like those two) is, they dont really focus on actually fighting someone. Yet there is a bloc of people (more so in some than others) which thinks it does heavily focus on that. That just seems like they are lying to themselves or missed the point of the style or what it has evolved into. Many things arent the same as they were say 50 years ago, or even 10 or 5.
If i get the ideology right for aikido, isnt the point meant to be not to hurt the person you are fighting? That just seems like loonacy in my eyes, and a secondary expressed purpose seems to be largely for spirtual devolopment using martial arts. Again presuming said info is right. So that means it shouldnt be on the first to do list for anyone after something for fighting. (which no one disputes, kind of like saying to do boxing when somone wants to throw people and joint lock them)
Then we get into how you name what ever system you do, the name you give something is quite important and what words you use. If you use aikido for example, it will be viewed as at least similar to Aikido aikido. Likewise if i stated i taught boxing, that would be associated with the sport of boxing, so people who wanted puglism wouldnt come to me, and people who wanted boxing would find out its not boxing.
Not entirely sure of the relivence though, that just seems to be the big point of contetion with it, and thats people are trying to say its something its not and get it to work for something it wasnt meant to work for. Which lets be fair, there is a lot of proof by now, by itself aikido now days doesnt really work for fighting. Im not even going to get into how you can ID a joint lock common in several systems as belonging soley to one though.
Note: I did a TL;DR again, plus i wanted some clarfication on the underlying ideology/principle/goal of Aikdio. Also seems like a fair assessment, along with MMA like Sports in general being a competition to see who is better in a fairly sterile enviorment on that day than the competitors in the action(s) at hand.