This is a question that i have seen brought up many times, with genrell conciseness being that sidious far out classes windu as a warrior, with the jedi master only being able to survive as long as he did because of a major "amp". I hold absolutely no ill will towards people who believe this theory, and I have heard some really good arguments for it. however, I must disagree, for reasons I have outlined below.1# SPEED
Because the novel describes windu and sidious as "fading in and out of reality" to the watching anakin, fans genrelly believes this means that windu was fighting far beyond his normal speed. however, windu has gone fast enough to appear outright invisible to onlookers on at least two occasions, and even managed to land six hits on a dark jedi in the blink of an eye.
2# FEATS
The most often brought up proof in support of the amp theory is that windu has not demonstrated a high enough martial skill to face the dark lord. however:
1. Windu proved himself to completely outclass jedi like quinlan vos, ending thier duel with a wave of the hand.
2. sora bulq and depa billaba, fellow masters of vappad and both professed by windu to supposedly be better duelists than himself, both proved entirely incapable of defeating him.
3. ventress, the dark jedi who outclasses a good majority of the jedi council, ran away after fighting windu for about five seconds, admit ting that windu was by far her superior.
4. Windu used his mastery of vappad to take down grievous, the being who has defeated groups of six jedi before, by cutting the floor of the train he was standing on.
5. Windu has curb stomped entire armys before. nuff said.
3# PALPATINES FEATS
Just as important as windus feats, we must also examine palpatines ability's, he is no doubt a top tier, but by how much?
1. Sidious defeated savage opress and darth maul at the same time, a VERY impressive feat, however, this is something obi-wan kenobi has accomplished before.
2. Sidious was blindingly fast, however both fisto and windu saw him leap from behind his desk, falling back into defensive posses. fisto was even capable of matching the dark lord for a couple blows before going down.
3. Palpatine did duel master yoda evenly, although he eventually defeated the grand master via force powers.
4. Palpatine absolutely DESPISES the lightsaber, only using one to "mock" the jedi.
4# VAPPAD
Adressing the "amp", although its true that windu was drawing on his inner darkness during his fight against sidious, this is something that he does for ALL fights. In addition, it has been proven that vaapad very defintly has its limits, it being unable to compinsate for drastic difrences in skill. If windu wasnt even close to palpatine in terms of skill, vaapad wouldnt have helped one iota. And its also true that vaapad works best against Sith, for the same reason ataru works best when you have room to jump around.
5# COUNT DOOKU
Another common argument is that "windu is equal to dooku, who is worse than sidious". However, dooku is more powerful than most peopole give him credit for, being able to go head to head with yoda with a lightsaber, and being strong enough in the force to stalemate the grandmaster. to top this, dooku and windu did fight evenly...in training duels before episode one. by the clone wars, there only real duel ended with dooku almost being killed.
6# YODA IS BETTER
Many sources claim yoda is more powerful than windu, and so it follows from simple logic that if yoda cant beat palpatine windu cant either. However, all these sources are either in universe opions of charectors (which, like real people, can be incredibly wrong) and OUT of universe opinions. And even if yoda is over all the more powerful of the two, that does not mean he will necessarily do any better in a specific situation, such as a lightsaber duel.
7# FORCE POWERS
The final argument is that sidious outclasses windu so much with the force that he could have ended the battle anytime he wanted. I disagree with this. Not only was most of palpatines impressive force feats after he was brought back to life in dark empire, but windu has shown his own share of powerful force showings, destroying entire armys with force waves. even if you take the 2003 series out of it, windu has still done things like destroy tanks and large groups of enemys with telekinessis, not to mention crippling grievous. And in the movie, when sidious DID use his force powers, all it got him was a face full of lightning.
ONE FINAL THOUGHT
The most common multiverse theory is that every time someone, anyone makes a choice, it creates two time lines, one where they siad no, one where they said yes. using this logic, battlefront 2 shows us a alternate universe where anakin never decided to intervene. the result? windu kills sidious. its not concrete proof of course, but it is interesting to note.
