Not quite.. According to my attempts ot understand few russian sources, here’s what I know about 1153 in brief:

Its was the seccond attempt to create a conventional carrier after Kiev class was already in put in production. It was like you said much smaller design than the larger project 1160 which dated few years earlier. pr. 1153 was however slighlty smaller than Kuznetsov, just bellow 300 meters in lenght and roughly same displacement. It wasen’t cancelled due failure of catabult design but more due political decision to continue the Kiev class which was made under high belives to V/STOL planes. Defence minister Ustinov particularry had strong hopes for the future supersonic VSTOL plane which was to follow the Yak-38. In this belive he had generated virtually a hate-like feelings towards conventional carriers and did quite effectly mash all attempts to have conventional aicrafts over seas during his servicetime. Not only was 1153 soon cancelled after it had emerged, but also when the issue was reintroduced in the forms of Kuznetsov and Varyag, he managed to get his point of wiev trough and 1143.5/6 was to have Ski-jump for the use of the new VSTOL plane rather than catabults and arrestor vwires for conventional planes. What I’ve understood the VSTOL plane (Yak-41) was after this decision form the base of the fighter airwing. Even before the first unit was completed however sukhoi and MiG managed to proof that their new jets Su-27 and MiG-29 could take of from the ski-jump as well. As the ship was designed from the outset to field conventional planes, adopting the new STOBAR arragment didn’t proove too difficoult.

This is however my own intrepretion of the existing russian sources. Its done by using translator services and translated text and I might be wrong…perhaps someone has solider insights to this matter?