Sumo is on now (watching it as I type even). And I think sumo shows us a good example of why combat rounds should be short in man-to-man combat systems. OD&D and AD&D's one minute rounds came out of the game's wargame roots, where a minute of mass combat makes sense. But for smaller scale battles, it's too gross a measurement.
Here's a sumo match from last year between Kaisei (orange) and Ryuden (black). I picked this because I actually know the winner of the match, Ryuden. He was my student when he was a middle schooler. Yes, I'm name dropping a name hardly anyone who reads this blog has heard of before. But I enjoy watching him as he's risen through the ranks over the years.
Anyway, the match starts at the 0:48 mark, and finishes at the 0:58 mark. 10 seconds only.
I think I remember hearing somewhere that the average length of a sumo match is 6 seconds. That means many of them don't even go on this long!
In D&D terms, that means whoever gets initiative usually pulls off an attack that either knocks the opponent down or out of the ring in the first round. And in AD&D terms, that's in the first segment!
Granted, sumo isn't deadly combat. But I think it provides a good example of why a very short combat round is a good thing.
[And I'm surprised that after 10 years of blogging, and 21 years of watching sumo, I'm just creating my "sumo" post label today!]