With regards to Mace vs Palpatine, there's probably no point in rehashing the same old arguments regarding whether or not Mace's disarming of Palpatine was legitimate; since the fight is never shown from Palpatine's perspective, there's no way to prove his intentions one way or the other. What we do have is Mace's perspective, and what can be said for sure is that, even taking the most generous possible interpretation for Mace, blade-to-blade he'd reached an impasse with Sidious:
There was no scrap of carpet nor shred of chair that might not at any second disintegrate in flares of red or purple; lampstands became brief shields, sliced into segments that whirled through the air; couches became terrain to be climbed for advantage or overleapt in retreat. But there was still only the cycle of power, the endless loop, no wound taken on either side, not even the possibility of fatigue. Impasse.
-Revenge of the Sith
Then, after sensing fear in his opponent, he made to take advantage of that moment of weakness and score the decisive blow:
He could feel the end of this battle approaching, and so could the blur of Sith he faced; in the Force, the shadow had become a pulsar of fear. Easily, almost effortlessly, he turned the shadow's fear into a weapon: he angled the battle to bring them both out onto the window ledge. Out in the wind. Out with the lightning. Out on a rain-slicked ledge above a half-kilometer drop. Out where the shadow's fear made it hesitate. Out where the shadow's fear turned some of its Force-powered speed into a Force-powered grip on the slippery permacrete. Out where Mace could flick his blade in one precise arc and slash the shadow's lightsaber in half.
-Revenge of the Sith
That's the questionable bit, though, since Palpatine suggests just afterwards that it hadn't been his fear and hesistance that Mace had sensed at all--but rather Anakin's:
"Fool," he said. He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons. "Fool!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?" Lighting blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatine's hands, and Mace didn't have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about.
-Revenge of the Sith
Even if we disregard the legitimacy that the narration lends to the claim, and assume that Palpatine was just bluffing, Mace still wouldn't have bested Sidious had the contest continued. Once again, impasse is the most favorable possible interpretation:
This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade[...] Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me-"
-Revenge of the Sith
All of this is pretty irrelevant to the topic at hand, though, since Mace's contest with Palpatine is the outlier. His sole feat that suggests parity with Yoda amongst the wealth of them that he has, performed under clearly extraordinary circumstances. For those who aren't aware, Mace's fighting style, Vaapad, is a technique that uses negative emotions, like the Sith do. When Mace fights, he flirts with the dark side, with his discipline--his diligence in holding himself back--being the only thing that prevents him from falling to evil like Vaapad's other practitioners did:
Mace Windu had almost smiled. "I created Vaapad to answer my weakness: it channels my own darkness into a weapon of the light.
-Revenge of the SithIt is a side effect of the Force immersion of Vaapad. My style grants great power, but at a terrible risk. Blood fever is a disease that can kill anyone it touches. To use Vaapad, you must allow yourself to enjoy the fight. You give yourself to the thrill of battle. The rush of winning. This is why so few students even attempt the style. Vaapad is a path that leads through the penumbra of the dark side. Here in the jungle, that shadow fringe is unexpectedly shallow. Full night is only a step away. I must be very, very careful here. Or I may come to understand what's happened to Depa all too well.
-Shatterpoint
Like with the Sith, Mace's strength is rooted in the intensity of his passions and negative thoughts, which is crucial to note, because his inner darkness is explicitly at an unprecedented, all-time high going into his fight with Sidious:
This is the moment that defines Mace Windu. Not his countless victories in battle, nor the numberless battles his diplomacy has avoided. Not his penetrating intellect, or his talents with the Force, or his unmatched skills with the lightsaber. Not his dedication to the Jedi Order, or his devotion to the Republic that he serves. But this. Right here. Right now. Because Mace, too, has an attachment. Mace has a secret love. Mace Windu loves the Republic. Many of his students quote him to students of their own: "Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are. Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace."For Mace Windu, for all his life, for all the lives of a thousand years of Jedi before him, true civilization has had only one true name: the Republic. He has given his life in the service of his love. He has taken lives in its service, and lost the lives of innocents. He has seen beings that he cares for maimed, and killed, and sometimes worse: sometimes so broken by the horror of the struggle that their only answer was to commit horrors greater still. And because of that love now, here, in this instant, Anakin Skywalker has nine words for him that shred his heart, burn its pieces, and feed him its smoking ashes.
Palpatine is Sidious. The Chancellor is the Sith Lord. He doesn't even hear the words, not really; their true meaning is too large for his mind gather in all at once. They mean that all he's done, and all that has been done to him-That all the Order has accomplished, all it has suffered-All the Galaxy itself has gone through, all the years of suffering and slaughter, the death of entire planets-Has all been for nothing. Because it was all done to save the Republic. Which was already gone. Which had already fallen. The corpse of which had been defended only by a Jedi Order that was now under the command of a Dark Lord of the Sith. Mace Windu's entire existence has become crystal so shot-through with flaws that the hammer of those nine words has crushed him to sand. But because he is Mace Windu, he takes this blow without a change of expression.
-Revenge of the Sith
This is directly referenced in the fight itself. Mace fights for his "secret love," casting away his Jedi restraint and allowing himself to be swallowed by the dark, in contrast with his previous disposition:
This was Vaapad's ultimate test[...] 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[...] Anakin could feel how the Force fed upon the shadow's murderous exaltation; he could feel fury spray into the Force though some poisonous abscess had crested in both their hearts. There was no Jedi restraint here. Mace Windu was cutting loose. Mace was deep in it now: submerged in Vaapad, swallowed by it, he no longer truly existed as an independent being.
-Revenge of the Sith
Given that Dooku is not the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, and that Mace is (presumably) not coming into the fight fresh after having his heart "shredded, burned to ashes, and fed to him," it's fair to assume that his performance here will be more in line with the rest of his performances, rather than the outlier that is his contest with Palpatine.
Three convenient examples of Mace's baseline performance are his fights with Sora Bulq, Assaj Ventress, and late-CW General Grievous, three opponents whom Dooku has also fought. In none of these fights does Mace outperform Dooku to any significant degree. His back and forth with Sora Bulq could easily be replicated by Dooku, who easily dispatched Sora while simultaneously fending off Tholme. His overpowering of Ventress (which in the Official Fact File is suggested to have been a demonstration of "all of his skills"😉 could easily be replicated by Dooku, who repelled Ventress and two high-ranking Nightsisters at the same time while blinded and drugged.
When he duels against late-CW Grievous, even though the General's mobility is severely limited by the environment, Mace is pressured, and he even almost has the tables turned on him when he moves to capitalize on an opening created by his environmental advantage:
Without pausing, Grievous drew two lightsabers from inside his billowing cloak. By the time they were ignited, Mace was already on and all over the cyborg, batting away at the two blades, swinging low at Grievous's artificial legs, thrusting at his skeletal face. The lightsabers thrummed and hissed, meeting one another in bursts of dazzling light. In a corner of Mace's mind he wondered to which Jedi Grievous's blades had belonged. Just as the Force was keeping Mace from being blown from the mag-lev's roof, magnetism of some sort was keeping the general fastened in place. For the cyborg, though, the coherence hindered as much as it helped, whereas Mace never remained in one place for very long. Again and again the three blades joined, in snarling attacks and parries. As Mace already knew from Ki-Adi-Mundi and Shaak Ti, Grievous was well trained in the Jedi arts. He could recognize the hand of Dooku in the general's training and technique. His strikes were as forceful as any Mace had ever had to counter, and his speed was astonishing. But he didn't know Vaapad - - the technique of dark flirtation in which Mace excelled[...] The loss of his confederates was noted by whatever computers were slaved to Grievous's organic brain, but the loss neither distracted nor slowed him. His sole setting was attack. Successful at analyzing Mace's lightsaber style, those same computers suggested that Grievous alter his stance and posture, along with the angle of his parries, ripostes, and thrusts. The result wasn't Vaapad, but it was close enough, and Mace wasn't interested in prolonging the contest any longer than necessary[...] Slipping into the gap made by Mace's saber, Grievous's left talon lost magnetic purchase on the roof, and the general faltered. Mace came out of his crouch prepared to drive his sword into Grievous's guts, but some last-instant firing of the general's cybersynapses compelled the cyborg's torso through a swift half twist that would have sent Mace's head hurtling into the canyon had the maneuver prevailed.
-Labyrinth of Evil
Dooku's handling of Grievous from the same time period (both in and out of universe) is, once again, as good or better than Mace's. I could also post panels of both of them slapping around Quinlan Vos with impunity, but with this much, the point already ought to be made: in none of the cases where Mace fights opponents that Dooku had also fought, does Mace ever fare decidedly better than Dooku did. Nor does he, in his duels with Saesee Tiin, Depa Billaba, Mother Talzin, or even his 2v1 against Darth Maul or his brief duel with the Count himself, ever perform in line with what one would expect from Yoda or Palpatine.
And this is completely consistent with what we're told. In both Yoda: Dark Rendezvous and the Power of the Jedi sourcebook, Mace and Dooku are presented as peers:
The Count's blade was quick as a viper striking. Among the other Jedi, perhaps only Mace Windu would have been his equal on neutral ground: but here on Vjun, steeped in the dark side, his bladework was malice made visible-wickedness cut in red light.
-Yoda: Dark RendezvousMaster Windu was also known within the Order for his unusual fighting style, one that he developed after studying the dueling styles of various lightsaber masters. His attacks consisted of relentless, unpredictable blows, like shots from an autoblaster. Master Windu himself remained perfectly balanced and centered. In the history of the Jedi Order, only two opponents ever overcame him in battle. One was Master Yoda, who some said was the Order's true master of lightsaber combat. The other was former Master Dooku, whose own fighting style was archaic, yet stunningly effective.
-Power of the Jedi sourcebook
This is consistent with Nick Gillards' categorization of the two as "level eight" combatants, as opposed to Anakin, Yoda, and Palpatine, who were categorized as "level nines":
When I started, I figured that a youngling is a level one. And somebody like Kit Fisto - seven. I did take it to eight and nine, but not many people know that. Eight and nine is a cheat. So Obi-Wan is eight. Yoda is nine. Mace is eight, bordering on nine. Anakin is nine.
-Nick GillardDooku & Maul are 8.
-Nick Gillard
In fairness, Mace was highlighted as being on the higher end of the "level eight" spectrum, and I would argue that, when he fully embraced his darkness against Sidious, he probably did cross that border into "level nine" territory. Extraordinary circumstances aside, though, he is an eight, his feats are consistent with other eights, and Count Dooku--being significantly stronger than Maul per several sources--is also a likely candidate to be high on the "level eight" spectrum. Ergo, the fight is likely to be decided by compatibility rather than a gulf in skill or power.
Originally posted by CaveDude33211
And Mace would see Dooku's shatterpoint and strike it as well.
Shatterpoint has never been effectively applied that way, though, not by Mace or by anybody else. Shatterpoints typically present themselves in ways that are either too literal or too abstract to be practically useful in a duel. In the case of his contest with Palpatine, Mace's use of shatterpoint is arguably what got him killed:
That was when Mace finally understood. He had it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatter-point of the Sith. The shatterpoint of the dark side itself. Mace thought, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anakin Skywalker. Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lightning bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Master's face.
-Revenge of the SithBefore he could follow through on his stroke, a sudden arc of blue plasma sheared through his wrist and his hand tumbled away with his lightsaber still in it and Palpatine roared back to his feet and lightning speared from the Sith Lord's hands and without his blade to catch it, the power of Palpatine's hate struck him full-on. He had been so intent on Palpatine's shatterpoint that he'd never thought to look for Anakin's. Dark lightning blasted away his universe. He fell forever.
-Revenge of the Sith
He was so reassured by his realization that Anakin was Palpatine's shatterpoint, so certain that victory was imminent, that he never even considered that Anakin would betray him. He was right about Palpatine's weakness, but he had no way of making use of it in the battle.
Originally posted by StiltmanFTW
Windu has that RotS showing against Sidious and it's often argued how his fighting style would overpower Dooku's defense, like Anakin did.
Mace's fighting style doesn't actually emphasize physical strength, though; Vaapad is aggressive, but it's all about overwhelming the opponent with fast and erratic strikes, not pounding them like Djem So does. Besides, while Mace does have some fair strength feats to his name, Dooku deals with physically dominant opponents all of the time; his weakness against brute force is overstated. Mace Windu is no Savage Oppress, and he's certainly no Anakin Skywalker.
