Can anyone Defeat Maul?
Or at least challenge him?
When I say anyone, the presumption is that anyone has at least a Force connection and a Lightsaber. Although that step isn’t always necessary - click me. A name would also be nice, but even that step can be tiptoed as well - click me. When I say win, it doesn’t have to be a majority, but rather a single round that may or may not be influenced by the environment or personal factors. It’s pretty apparent that with Maul, there won’t be any 10/10 landslides and his track record of battles compliment that notion. Here are just a few examples:
Siolo'urmanka
A Jedi Master who switched life on monk-mode, renouncing the lightsaber and it's practice entirely. So it comes as shock when Maul faces this guy and gets slapped with a wooden stick. It’s a fight the Sith Assassin should have won, yet overcoming him took form in a second fight with a cheapened victory. Did Maul eventually surpass Siolo? I don’t see a single reason why he should have, he was perfectly fine with omitting the old master’s combat superiority, and rather content in winning via prepared booby-trap. There was no benchmark set to surpass him, rather that Maul thought he already did by staging a fancy trick.
Mighella
Nothing to her name but an uninspired accolade from The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. Usually when characters receive their token hypes, they’re referred as one of the best of their faction - particularly when said faction is a relative unknown. But the encyclopedia settles on “one of the better nightsisters” as their description for Mighella. The problem here is that there were no named nightsisters kicking around while she was alive, yet she keeps up with Maul in a sword fight regardless, losing due to her semi-lightsaber resistant blade only being semi-resistant. Mighella was the only Force sensitive fighter of the Black Sun syndicate, and it is rather apparent he could not handle her like the rest. Other powerhouses have walked through armies of people like her and Dooku’s stint with Talzin’s best makes it all seem underwhelming.
Darsha Assant
The first in a series of novices to give Maul difficulty and very nearly kill him. It’s not enough that dueling is basically obsolete, or that the Jedi are suffering from diminished Force abilities - Mace Windu Attack of the Clones. The circumstances are irrelevant, as the premise is that anyone can win against Maul and not that they always will.
Obi Wan - As of TPM
Fiction does not represent something real, since what it refers to is not really there. Fiction is not what the creator had in mind at some moment during composition of the work, or what the writer thinks the work means after it is finished, or what reasons they had for including certain parts of the work. Maul got cut in half where he shouldn’t have, with every advantage on his side. There are no excuses for bad writing. This is a mark of Maul’s stupidity.
Kanan
I need not elaborate.
Does Maul suck? There existed bygone fighters who just by the breadth of their environment, had to become warriors of Maul's prestige. Whether it be to survive, or at least avoid having their legs cut-off by Padawans. In that regard, I don’t know if he would past the training wheel stages. Maul's training was much harsher than that of Jedi in his time, but I don’t know if he would’ve survived the practique on Korriban’s Academy.
”Instructors of Sith acolytes, the overseers are tasked with rooting out the weak and molding the next great Sith who will lead the Empire to glory. Cruelty, manipulation, and deceit are choice tools of instruction. By demanding nothing short of perfection from their class of students, acolytes quickly learn the cost of failure. While still a young teacher, Overseer Ragate took delight in cutting down the first acolyte to stumble under her tutelage - a grim and effective warning to her surviving students. Brutality is only one way an overseer shapes Sith acolytes. Some plant the seeds of deception, showering weaker acolytes with praise to goad another student to strike them down. Others dispatch acolytes on impossible tasks in the deadly tombs or hostile wastes of Korriban. Overseer Rance was one such instructor, sending his acolytes into the lower wilds. For days, the corrupting influence of Korriban's wilds twisted their minds and drove the students mad. Only two acolytes returned to Rance. He simply smiled and ordered the exhausted acolytes to battle to the death. The victor would be Sith."- SW:TOR Encyclopedia
Maul's training was harsh, but what the acolytes had to endure on Korriban, might have been even harsher. Perhaps it's because the instructors didn't want to invest both time and resource in sub-standard trainees, rather than forge a process of elimination, and identify the finest of the lot. Maul is a fairly capable fighter, but he does bring to mind the primary flaw of the rule of two. The death of either master or apprentice is a massive blow to the model. The master could train an apprentice who's naturally unfit for mastery himself and reveal him to the uncultivated world in hopes that in an age of blaster deflection - and dueling incompetency - said apprentice won’t get divided in half by a novice Jedi. For Maul that is too much to ask, and I have nothing other than serious intentions when stating a bog-standard Sith Marauder could offer him a challenge.