It wasn't till I sunk my teeth properly into playing consistent online matches that I started to really understand and enjoy the stamina system, no, it isn't perfect, but it works a lot better than I thought, excluding movement, which I think should be atleast slightly inhibited by stamina.
I noticed that stamina directly effects block health.
Cumulative body shots will noticeably drain your opponent.
The lower your stamina the more damage you take.
If you can't grapple, low stamina can be a death sentence. I fought a few people who outstuck me, but by the time they hurt me (usually round 2, real time clock) they haven't got enough overall stamina left to break my guard. Once they hit 40%, 3 strikes gassed them, this made timing them VERY easy, they 1-2-3, I come back with a counter shot to their 0% stamina chin and get a stun, KD or KO depending on the move and their chin.
My point being, it took me a week to start to competently comprehend the stamina system, and now that I do, I only want to see minor tweaks as opposed to Alvarez/Gatheje style stamina.
I'd like to see movement slowed a lower stam, perks relating to stamina get fixed (which is confirmed already) and stamina recovery per round to either be looked at (as it seems drastically variable) or explained properly to us.