RotS Mace Windu vs Obi-Wan Kenobi (SABERS ONLY)

Alright folks, here we go.

Setting:

• 25 feet starting distance in the same place where Obi Wan fought Grievous in RotS

• Mace charges at Kenobi with a willingness to kill, but is not fueled by any extraordinary emotions as he was against Sidious.

• Legends sources take priority, but canon will also be considered when nothing in Legends contradicts it.

• I will directly cite any sources pertinent to claim made about either Windu or Kenobi, however, claims made about other characters when used relative to either jedi will not be directly cited due to space and time constraints. The source will be provided if a claim is challenged.

This is my primary claim: Mace Windu is incapable of winning a majority of rounds against Obi-Wan Kenobi due to the latter's impenetrable lightsaber form, in addition to the former possessing a negligible force power advantage through physical augmentation.

- My first point is to establish Kenobi's Soresu's effectiveness against a variety of opponents and apply it to this fight.

- My second point is to address a common nay-say claim; that Mace's physical speed and strength augmentation is beyond what Kenobi can handle, regardless of his lightsaber form, and that he would succumb to exhaustion before being able to exploit Windu

My intentions are not to lower Mace's standards as a light-saber duelist, but rather elevate those of Kenobi.

Let’s begin:

Obi-Wan’s defensive light-saber form, Soresu, has proven to be impenetrable by a variety of opponents such as Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Darth Vader among others. As a result, it is reasonable to assume that Mace Windu would also be incapable of doing so, due to him being of a relatively similar caliber of lightsaber duelist as the aforementioned.
Obi-Wan was noted to deflect Count Dooku’s, someone who has been compared as Mace Windu’s equal—and insinuated at times his superior—at lightsaber dueling, attacks with ease:

“ - and this image, this plan, was so clear in Dooku's mind that he almost failed to notice that Kenobi met every one of his thrusts without so much as moving his feet, staying perfectly centered, perfectly balanced, blade never moving a millimeter more than necessary, deflecting without effort, riposting with flickering strikes and stabs swifter than the tongue of a Garollian ghost viper, and when Dooku felt Skywalker regain his feet and stride once more toward his back, he finally registered the source of that blinding defensive velocity Kenobi had used a moment ago, and only then, belatedly, did he understand that Kenobi's Ataro and Shii-Cho had been ploys, as well. Kenobi had become a master of Soresu.” – Matthew Stover, Revenge of the Sith , pp 169

Kenobi easily deflected the attacks from the same person who had managed to contend with grandmaster Yoda on more than one occasion, even wounding him during one alteration. Kenobi’s Soresu defenses were so good that Dooku had to resort to incapacitating him telekinetically with the force during their fight in Stover’s novel, as he couldn’t do it through saber combat. Kenobi’s form, one originally developed to deflect blaster-fire, was so effective that it rendered Makashi, a light-saber style created specifically for saber-dueling, it’s premise being around finding an opponent’s weakness and exploiting it, useless.
Obi-Wan’s mastery of Soresu would show itself again when facing General Grievous. In fact, Mace Windu himself admitted that Kenobi was the only jedi capable of defeating the general due to his light-saber form:

“ "He must have been trained by Count Dooku," Mace had said, "so you can expect Makashi as well; given the number of Jedi he has fought and slain, you must expect that he can attack in any
style, or all of them. In fact, Obi-Wan, I believe that of all living Jedi, you have the best chance to defeat him."…."That is so like you, Master Kenobi," the Korun Master had said, shaking his head. "I am called a great swordsman because I invented a lethal style; but who is greater, the creator of a
killing form—or the master of the classic form?"
"I'm very flattered that you would consider me a master, but really—"
"Not a master. The master," Mace had said. "Be who you are, and Grievous will never
defeat you."” – Stover, pp 169.

Mace Windu himself says it outright: Kenobi is the master of Soresu and is the jedi master that Grievous won’t be able to defeat. There is another part of this excerpt that needs to be noted. Grievous is described as being capable of attacking in any lightsaber form or in any combination of various forms. In other words, he is completely unpredictable. Despite this feature have being the reason why Grievous managed to kill numerous jedi, it is incapable of doing the same against Obi Wan as Windu himself says.
During their actual duel, Grievous never manages to land a hit on Obi-Wan, despite being able to strike 12 times per second with unpredictable levels of strength and swing angles, due to Kenobi’s Soresu:

” The electrodrivers powering Grievous's mechanical arms let each of the four attack thrice in a single second; integrated by combat algorithms in the bio-droid's electronic network of peripheral processors, each of the twelve strikes per second came from a different angle with different speed and intensity, an unpredictably broken rhythm of slashes, chops, and stabs of which every single one could take Obi-Wan's life. Not one touched him.” – Stover, pp 265

In fact, Grievous had to strike at twenty times per second before he was able to strain Kenobi’s defenses, and even then, was quickly maimed when Kenobi applied a counter attack:

” After all, he had often walked unscathed through hornetswarms of blasterfire, defended only by the Force's direction of his blade; countering twelve blows per second was only difficult, not impossible. His blade wove an intricate web of angles and curves, never truly fast but always just fast enough, each motion of his lightsaber subtly interfering with three or four or eight of the general's strikes, the rest sizzling past him, his precise, minimal shifts of weight and stance slipping them by centimeters. Grievous, snarling fury, ramped up the intensity and velocity of his attacks—sixteen per second, eighteen—until finally, at twenty strikes per second, he overloaded Obi-Wan's defense. So Obi-Wan used his defense to attack. A subtle shift in the angle of a single parry brought Obi-Wan's blade in contact not with the blade of the oncoming lightsaber, but with the handgrip. —slice—“ – Stover pp 265

Unlike Grievous, Mace Windu does not have the physical advantage of having more than one light-saber. In order to come close to over-whelming Kenobi, he would need to be striking with his one light-saber at the same rate Grievous was with four. In other words, Mace would need to be moving four times the speed General Grievous was at his peak of twenty times per second, or 5 strikes per arm per second, in order to come close to overwhelming Kenobi. Personally I believe that it would be very unlikely for Mace to achieve such a level of agility due to the standing of various characters in Pablo Hidalgo’s (author of various SW visual guides and webstrip comics) Head-to-Head. The agility rankings of various characters are as follows:
Yoda: 8
Darth Vader: 4
Obi-Wan: 7
Anakin Skywalker (Mustafar iteration): 9
Luke Skywalker (Revenge of the Jedi): 7
General Grievous: 9
Emperor Palpatine: 8

While Mace Windu isn’t ranked, it can be implied that he wouldn’t pose an agility threat to Obi Wan due to Grievous being a 9 while Yoda and Sidious are 8’s. Unless it is going to be argued that Mace Windu is greater than an eight, there is no reason to believe that he has a significant agility advantage over Kenobi. Even if Mace were a 9, it still wouldn’t have much of a bearing as Kenobi, despite being a 7, was fully capable of handling Grievous, a 9, and a Dark Sider Anakin, also a 9.

This leads me to the Mustafar fight between Kenobi and pre-suit Vader. In Stover’s novelization, Kenobi is described as being able to counter and block many of Anakin’s attacks. Never does it state that Kenobi was feeling overwhelmed as he did against Grievous. This is the same person who managed to outright over-power Count Dooku, Barriss Offee, and Asajj Ventress with his strength, even before his power-growth prime in Revenge of the Sith. There is no reason to believe that Mace Windu would be capable of penetrating Obi-Wan’s Soresu.

To briefly conclude point 1, we saw just how capable Obi-Wan’s Soresu defenses really are against even the most deadly of opponents such as Count Dooku, Grievous, and Anakin. All three of these highly capable individuals had to rely on force abilities or escape methods, to circumvent the Soresu master. There is no reason to believe that Mace would be able to directly defeat Kenobi in a light-saber duel through a lapse in skill or technique.

My next point focuses on Mace Windu’s force augmentation abilities and whether they would be capable of over-whelming Kenobi. Earlier I had concluded that his performance against Grievous’s insane agility and strikes-per-second made it unlikely that Mace would be able to conjure up any advantage over Kenobi in the agility/speed department. All that’s left then would be his strength and endurance.

The easy answer here would be to cite Anakin’s performance against Kenobi and conclude that if Obi-Wan can fend off the one who out-right over-powered Dooku, one of the most powerful Sith Lords and jedi, then he must surely be capable of doing the same against Windu.
Instead, let’s look at the finer details:

According to Fight Saber: Jedi Lightsaber Combat from Star Wars Insider 62, Soresu can described as a fighting style centered around economy of motion, tight move-sets, and expanding as little energy as possible for maximum defensive protection. This is a strong contrast to Mace’s preferred style of Vaapad, which relied on rapid, unpredictable, ferocious, and physically demanding move-sets which was very taxing on the user. Obi-Wan as of Revenge of the Sith was 38 while Mace Windu was approximately 53. Given the age difference as well as the differences in energy expenses in their respective forms, it’s reasonable to assume that Mace, not Obi-Wan, would be the first to fatigue in this fight. How long this would take is uncertain, but given how demanding Vaapad is coupled with Mace’s age, it wouldn’t be too lengthy before fatiguing.

On the topic of force-augmented strength, we can observe Windu’s thoughts on Grievous as fighter during their brief duel in Labyrinth of Evil:
” His strikes were as forceful as any Mace had ever had to counter, and his speed was astonishing.”

Grievous’s strikes being as forceful and fast as anything Mace had previously had to face, including the likes of Yoda during practice duels, would suggest that it was unlikely that Windu was holding back much, if at all, physical-augmentation wise again Grievous. Knowing that Kenobi had no trouble dealing with Grievous’s strength, we can assume that he would also have no issue with Mace’s strength.
Mace Windu’s most impressive saber-dueling feat, by far, is his fight with Darth Sidious. While Mace was able to contend with the Sith Lord’s extreme speed and strength, it is imperative to note that this was under extreme circumstances. Mace’s execution of Vaapad in this moment was flawlessly immersive, and on top of this, Windu was fighting for what was in his mind everything he had ever stood for:
“Sinking into Vaapad, Mace Windu fought for his life. More than his life: each whirl of blade and whipcrack of lightning was a strike in defense of democracy, of justice and peace, of the rights of ordinary beings to live their own lives in their own ways. He was fighting for the Republic that he loved.” Stover pp 292

Even with his emotional motivation and vaapad amp, Mace was still fighting for his life against Sidious.
Probably even more important to note was that Mace’s combat abilities in this fight were fueled by Sidious’s extremely dark emotions and reflected back:
“Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being. Vaapad is a channel for darkness, and that darkness flowed both ways. He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center— And let it fountain out again. He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt.”

It was Sidious’s extreme fury manifesting itself in Mace’s own saber technique and physical augmentation, not primarily his own, that allowed him to contend and eventually outduel the sith. Windu was only capable of doing this due to him sinking so far into Vaapad; something that would be unlikely to occur during a duel with Obi-Wan due to the former not being a raging sith lord for one, in addition to Mace not harboring the same emotional feelings towards Kenobi as he did against Sidious.

Without someone else’s fury and darkness to reflect back, Windu has nothing to augment his physical strength and speed to the level of Sidious. Because of this, he would not have any sort of overwhelming physical augmentation advantage over Obi Wan. The question I would ask before ending this would be: Has Mace Windu ever dueled a non-dark-side using duelist? Sora Bulq and Quinlan Vos were both trapped in their own darkness when they faced Windu. Facing dark-side using users was always an advantage for Windu as it fueled his own abilities, but what about when facing peaceful, collected users such as Kenobi? Vaapad is both Windu’s strength and weakness. With it he can take down those as powerful as Sidious, but without the aide of another opponents darkness, it is limited in its application.

To conclude, in the first half of this writing we concluded that Obi-Wan’s Soresu defense form was extremely effective against dark-side, aggressive users. By the time of Revenge of the Sith, not a single opponent was able to push back Kenobi without the aide of telekinetic force abilities. Because his effectiveness against a variety of users, we concluded that it would be just as effective against Mace Windu.
In the second half, we analyzed Mace Windu’s physical augmentation abilities and how they would fair against Kenobi. The ultimate conclusion was that General Grievous, the one Kenobi managed to defeat, was able to match Mace’s Vaapad blow-for-blow with equal speed and strength. Additionally, we also saw that Mace’s performance against Sidious and his ability to match the sith lord’s speed and strength was due to a emotional amp in coordination with a super-conducting Vaapad loop that “consumed” Mace’s physical being. These circumstances could never be replicated against another opponent, and certainly not against a peaceful user among the likes of Kenobi. Because of this, it is reasonable to assume that Obi Wan would be fully capable of matching Mace’s attacks blow-for-blow and fatiguing out the elder jedi as he would not have a super-conducting loop to endlessly fuel himself.

Obi-Wan takes a majority of wins against Mace Windu in the circumstances described in the original post.

Thank you for your time, I understand that my post may not be perfect, so feel free to leave constructive feedback.

Also feel-free to either challenge or support my claims.

Yeah, this is a match up I've been wondering about for awhile. I've always wanted to see Kenobi fight Mace, Dooku, and Vader in saber's only which I personally think he has a good chance of taking a majority against any of the three of them.

Anakin and Grievous being faster than Yoda? Maybe. But didn't the book have Yoda being the ESB/ROTJ of himself?

Plus Star Wars Head-To-Head or even Pablo Hidalgo isn't the best source for stuff like this let's be honest.

Not sure, prolly either way.

Originally posted by TheNuisanceBird
Grievous being faster than Yoda? Maybe.

lul at using head-to-head

Originally posted by Ursumeles

Considering his feats/descriptions from the ROTS novel it's entirely possible.

Maybe I should've been more clear I meant ESB/ROTJ Yoda which is the one the book uses last time I checked. I think that was the reason they had him losing to Vader.

gevious didn't do anything against windu. They fought for a single, brief, exchange where Grievous tried and failed to accurately replicate Mace's form. The only reason Mace resorted to BFR was because his priority was palps.

I'm still going with Mace. He is ~ Dooku as of Dark Rendevous and seems to have grown more powerful by RotS; meanwhile, whilst Obi Wan is a match for Dooku in pure swordplay, he still likely isn't quite at parity given that Dooku can fend off him + restrained Anakin for a modest bit of time, so Mace > Dooku >= Obi Wan. And this is not factoring in his half of the superconducting loop. Obi Wan has soresu, sure, but it's unclear if that will not just delay the inevitable.

Didnt find Kenobi s wins over Maul worth mentioning?

Anyway Mace wins. Kenobis only hope is going all defensive from the get go which honestly hes not all that likely to do. But even then I doubt that would hold off Mace indefinitely. There will be a winner and it will be Mace.

If we include Force powers then honestly Mace makes pretty short work of Obi-Wan.

As is the answer with this thread always, Kenobi holds his own and makes Mace work hard for it, but ultimately Windu is just better.

This fight is going off the presumption that Kenobi is familiar with Mace's Vaapad and knows his best plan of strategy is to go completely defensive and wait for him to tire out. There will be no super-conductive loop; Mace will only have his energy to feed off of, and eventually will fatigue.

Assuming this strategy, Mace has nothing going for him. He is not faster than Kenobi, or at least not fast enough to overwhelm him, and the same can be said for his strength.

In a non-ideal fight, Mace would win via a force advantage or by luring Kenobi into attack mode, but this fight is assuming special, controlled-environment circumstances.

Windu being "just better" is not an argument at this point.

Kenobi's wins against Maul were not relevant, because if you're using his Florrum performance against the brothers, that was his offensive mode which doesn't go along with the theme of this fight. His Rebels Maul win was also irrelevant as it relied on him playing on, and predicting, Maul's emotions.

Again, Kenobi was able to hold off Anakin and Grievous as long as he did, despite being at a power disadvantage, due to his form's simplicity and conservative use of energy. That's a strong contrast to Mace's taxing Vaapad.

up; we're not done here.

Windu is just better tbh.

Originally posted by Stigma
Windu is just better tbh.

🙂

Originally posted by Kurk

Kenobi's wins against Maul were not relevant, because if you're using his Florrum performance against the brothers, that was his offensive mode which doesn't go along with the theme of this fight. His Rebels Maul win was also irrelevant as it relied on him playing on, and predicting, Maul's emotions.

Kenobis defences held up against Maul on their first fight on Florrum. And shortly against both Maul and Opress.

I doubt his offensive in the cave would have worked half as well without his defences holding up as strongly as they did.

Wasnt thinking of Rebels since this is ROTS Kenobi, but Rebels Kenobi was clearly a level above his ROTS incarnation, proving just how invulnerable he is when on the defensive. And also showing hes not likely to switch to an offence anymore.

Originally posted by Kurk

Again, Kenobi was able to hold off Anakin and Grievous as long as he did, despite being at a power disadvantage, due to his form's simplicity and conservative use of energy. That's a strong contrast to Mace's taxing Vaapad.

Okay, but Kenobi didnt teach Windu like he did Anakin. And neither Anakin or Grievous have defeated Sidious.

I mean you wouldnt argue ROTS Kenobi could hold off against Palpatine or Yoda in Sabers would you?

Windu wrecks him.

Originally posted by Darth Thor

Okay, but Kenobi didnt teach Windu like he did Anakin. And neither Anakin or Grievous have defeated Sidious.

I mean you wouldnt argue ROTS Kenobi could hold off against Palpatine or Yoda in Sabers would you?

Kenobi taught Anakin Shien and Ataru, not the variant of Djem So he was utilizing by the time of RotS. Even if he had, what difference does it make? Dooku was having issue with Anakin's, not Obi-Wan's, strength; yet the latter lasted an extraordinary amount of time against Mustafar Anakin's strength. Why couldn't he handle Mace's strength?

I already addressed in the OP how Stover's novel says Mace's strength and speed was Sidious's being deflected back, not primarily Mace's own. The moment he broke concentration from Vaapad he was nearly blown away.

"He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center— And let it fountain out again. He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt."

Kenobi is not a source of "rage and power" that Mace can reflect in the form of speed and strength.

I would not argue that Kenobi would defeat Sidious or Yoda in sabers for the same reason Mace wouldn't be able to had Vaapad not been available.

Originally posted by quanchi112
Windu wrecks him.

Originally posted by Kurk
Kenobi taught Anakin Shien and Ataru, not the variant of Djem So he was utilizing by the time of RotS. Even if he had, what difference does it make? Dooku was having issue with Anakin's, not Obi-Wan's, strength; yet the latter lasted an extraordinary amount of time against Mustafar Anakin's strength. Why couldn't he handle Mace's strength?

I already addressed in the OP how Stover's novel says Mace's strength and speed was Sidious's being deflected back, not primarily Mace's own. The moment he broke concentration from Vaapad he was nearly blown away.

"He accepted the furious speed of the Sith Lord, drew the shadow's rage and power into his inmost center— And let it fountain out again. He reflected the fury upon its source as a lightsaber redirects a blaster bolt."

Kenobi is not a source of "rage and power" that Mace can reflect in the form of speed and strength.

I would not argue that Kenobi would defeat Sidious or Yoda in sabers for the same reason Mace wouldn't be able to had Vaapad not been available.

Making Mace look weaker helps you; Sheev will now appear to be even more overrated.