Duel of fates in "real time"

This is the closest George Lucas came to rekindling the excitement (my excitement, anyway) of the "old" Star Wars films.
The "Duel of Fates" from The Phantom Menace felt like old school Star Wars. In hindsight, it was all sort of downhill from there.

He would never really top Darth Maul, as far as villains go, for the remainder of the prequels. In fact, Lucas probably topped even Vader with Darth Maul. What came after Darth Maul? Count Dooku? I don't think so. General Grievous??

I think this duel even tops (unfortunately) that which was supposed to be the duel, the one we read about in that issue of Starlog way back before the prequels were even a remote possibility, the one between Ben Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker.