I don't find VP/WP more 'realistic' than hp. In fact, I find them somewhat less realistic... you can charge though a rain of bullets and not be scratched, and then suddenly *bam* *bam* most anything thrown/shot at you causes gaping wounds.
That is, imagine a 10 round fight with bats/pipes/something. Assuming no crits are dealt in the first 8 rounds (pretty likely, around 80% chance) and the right amount of VP, the fighters swing at each other for ~48 seconds without getting any serious wounds, then suddenly lose half of their hit points in each of the next 6 seconds. Wha...?
No, thanks, I'll stick with the abstraction of hit points.