Okay, so. It turns out the guy who I had lined up to program the fighting game, who constantly brags about his ability to program games and had even suggested this game be entirely online, does not know how to program the code to play online, nor does he know how to program fighting game AI so the game could be offline (which was why he suggested it be an entirely online game in the first place).
That, coupled with the overall lack of interest in the game/contest (not just here, but everywhere the contest was posted), means it's canned.
For now.
I still have interest in producing SOME KIND of fighting game in the future, but for right now I wouldn't expect it any time soon.

For all the people that were planning to enter, and the one person here who actually did, I apologize.

As God said in his final message to his creation, "Sorry for the inconvenience."