Instigator / Pro

Type1

1266

rating

119

debates

15.97%

won

Topic

#616

Yoda technically won his duel with Sidious in Revenge of the Sith

Status

Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics

Better arguments

Better sources

Better legibility

Better conduct

After 1 vote and with the same amount of points on both sides...

It's a tie!

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Publication date: 03.18.2019 06:57AM
Last updated date: 03.29.2019 12:15PM
Type: Standard
Number of rounds: 3
Time for argument: Three days
Max argument characters: 30,000
Voting period: One week
Point system: Multiple criterions
Voting system: Open

Contender / Con

KingArthur

1489

rating

debates

50.0%

won

Description

No information

Round 1

Type1

03.20.2019 03:44AM

Pro

1: Yoda scared Sidious

Right in the beginning of the duel, Sidious tried to flee. This shows that he was genuinely concerned Yoda could defeat him or at least do him harm. Yoda showed no fear during the duel but Sidious visibly shat his pants about three times. First when he tried to flee, second when Yoda sent the spinning senatorial hover-thing at him, and third when Yoda blocked and almost reversed his lightning back on him.

2: Yoda disarmed Sidious

The lightsaber combat portion of the duel was relatively short as Yoda was a supreme duelist and Sidious could not bare him for long. In the movie, Sidious was not shown being disarmed but after a cut to mustafar and back Sidious has no lightsaber in hand and instead has fallen back on his force abilities. Even if Yoda had not actually disarmed him during the off screen portion of the duel it is still clear Yoda was the better swordsman, as he was a true master of the lightsaber whereas Sidious saw lightsaber skill as being of little priority in his training as a sith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr4aTFAcYQI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-jFAru_lQs

3: Yoda was not overpowered by Sidious

In the end of the duel, when Sidious and Yoda were locked in the struggle of the force lightning ball, Sidious shat his pants for the third consecutive time when he realized he could not overpower Yoda, then was almost overpowered himself. In the end, Yoda could not fully defeat the emperor, but he also was not bested by any means. Neither of them could hold on any longer, and the energy between them dispersed, sending them both flying, and Yoda only flew further due to his much smaller size.

4: Summary

It is safe to say that Yoda came closer to defeating Sidious than Sidious came to defeating him. Yoda disarmed Sidious, forced him to empty his bowels in his robes 3 times, and nearly overpowered him with the force.

KingArthur

03.20.2019 12:20PM

Con

I will refrain from posting counter arguments in the opening round.

1. The Point of the Duel

If the purpose of this fight was sport or recreation I could see an argument for Yoda being the points victor. However, this duel had a stated purpose by Yoda himself. Before the battle Yoda tells Obi-Wan "destroy the Sith we must" [1]. Yoda does not go the battle Sidious in order to show his skills or almost win. He goes there with the express purpose to destroy him.

2. The Outcome

Obviously Yoda fails in his express purpose. He does not destroy Sidious. Sidious reigns for another 30 years after this fight. Again, Yoda tells us in his own words how he saw the fight. "Into exile I must go, failed I have" [2]. Yoda lost the fight, fled and stated that he failed.

3. Ultimate Outcome

Not only does Yoda lose, he loses so badly he never attempts to duel Sidious again. If he was so close to winning he would have regrouped and given it another go. He never does. He goes into exile for the rest of his life. Yoda lost this Duel and lost it badly.

He did not fulfill his purpose for the fight. He States that he failed and then goes into exile to never try it again. Yoda loses.

Thank you.

[1] https://www.quotes.net/mquote/91314

[2] https://www.quotes.net/mquote/91299

Round 2

Type1

03.20.2019 12:44PM

Pro

Yes, Yoda failed in his mission, but he did better than Sidious in the actual fight. He goes into exile not because he lost the fight, but because he failed to kill Sidious.

Yoda essentially was slightly better than Sidious, but not enough to fully defeat him. If you broke down the fight and calculated who was winning, it is clear Yoda would have the better numbers. I realize this wasn't like a boxing match but an actual fight to the death, yet it still remains that Yoda was the superior fighter.

KingArthur

03.20.2019 06:35PM

Con

Refutations

1. Yoda Was a Better Fighter

An argument could be made that Yoda was a vwtter fighter however this debate is about who won the duel between the two. A superior fighter can lose a single bout to an inferior opponent. While Yoda may have gotten some good moments in, in the end, he failed. He ended up in the low position on the Senate floor and ultimately fled the battle.

Whether you were up at any point during a fight if you flee and don't finish then you lose.

The debate is not whether Yoda is a better fighter in a vaccuum but whether he won this particular fight. Which he didn't.

2. Yoda Disarmed His Opponent

This one seems more like a moot point since Yoda was also disarmed at the end of the duel. If we're going on being disarmed then they both were and Yoda still loses.

Points

1. Yoda does not fufill his purpose for the fight

2. He admits he failed

3. He flees the fight

4. He never finishes the job and Sidious remains alive and well and in control

Thank you.

Round 3

Type1

03.21.2019 09:18PM

Pro

Well by your standards of winning neither of them won, because Sidious did worse in the fight overall and Yoda ultimately failed to kill him. The only way to say either of them won is if you break it down and look at who did better overall, otherwise there is no real victor here at all. You can either say it was a tie or that Yoda won depending on how you look at it, but the idea that Sidious won is based on a superficial appearance of him winning based merely on the fact that Yoda was the one that fell off the platform. By your standards Yoda would have needed to kill Sidious to be considered the winner but by merely surviving Sidious won the fight. These standards are ridiculous and at the end of the day Yoda did better in the fight as I've already demonstrated.

Yoda was disarmed at the last minute but that doesn't take away from the fact that when Sidious was disarmed it was because Yoda was a better swordsman and when Yoda was disarmed he immediately proved himself to be slightly more powerful than Sidious with the force because it was Sidious shitting his pants and nearly being overpowered while Yoda stood strong. Like I said when the lightning ball exploded in both of their faces Yoda only flew further because he was smaller and lighter, and he was actually on the verge of overpowering Sidious before both of them lost control over the energy.

It also should be noted that the primary reason Yoda went into exile is plot, and if ROTS came before ESB it may not have happened that way. But a non fourth wall breaking reason is that while Yoda was slightly better than Sidious he was not powerful enough to kill him, which means that Sidious would have the entire empire on his side hunting down Yoda from that point on, which would make continuing the engagement at a later time very difficult if not impossible.

So in sum if your idea of winning necessitates the death of the emperor for Yoda and necessitates mere survival for Sidious, then yes Sidious won. But if you take winning to mean doing better in the fight Yoda clearly won.

KingArthur

03.22.2019 12:15PM

Con

Conclusion

My opponent is once again trying to frame this fight in a vacuum about being the better fighter but as failed to answer my significant points.

First, Yoda admits he failed his fight.

Second, Yoda is disarmed and loses the high ground.

Third, Yoda does not injure, maim or kill the emperor.

Fourth, he flees.

Now if we want to say it was a draw, how can we award Yoda the victory when he lost the high ground? He ended the duel on the floor with no weapon and promptly flees. That is not a victory in any sense.

Even if Yoda simply flew further because he was small after the force explosion, he should have taken that into account if he really was the superior here.

My opponent failed to carry the burden of proof through this debate and did not adequately refute the main points as to why Yoda truly lost.

Thank you.

Barney

03.23.2019 03:21AM

Just tried to watch the fight in question... Problem being that Farscape is now on Amazon Prime, and re-watching a couple episodes made CGI Yoda painful to look at. Episode III came out after Rygel's final moment on TV, and with an unlimited budget they could not best him.

That said, if this debate is still tied in a few days, someone remind me and I'll cast a vote.

KingArthur

03.22.2019 12:54PM

Thanks. I love star wars. Fun first debate to get into the swing of things.

Barney

03.21.2019 11:52PM

Oddly entertaining. I do wish the actual sequence were shown, but with the debaters in agreement on the basic events that is not truly needed.

Ramshutu

03.23.2019 12:28AM

Criterion

Pro

Tie

Con

Points

Better arguments

3 point(s)

Better sources

2 point(s)

Better legibility

1 point(s)

Better conduct

1 point(s)

Reason:

This was actually fairly good!

So, I don’t think there was any contest of pros primary points that Yoda was the better fighter. There were two exceptions; that Yoda was also disarmed (which I must accept), and that Yoda fled the fight. I feel that pros reasoning about why fleeing a flight is okay was light, though the understanding that he couldn’t deal with sidious and the empire by himself was good enough to make me consider the final retreat as not part of the battle.

I also think there was really any contest that Yodas mission was a failure. Con portrays the failure of the duel based on the outcome and stated goals, pro makes it clear he was talking about the physical fight itself and who got the better of who.

So this comes down to framing, what consistutes a win of a duel, key for me, is that I feel it is inherent in the resolution that pro is not talking about full victory, but a technical victory. Pro argues that a technical win, is fighting better overall. Con argues it is falling short of killing the opponent.

At this point, I could either go with “fully bests opponent”, which would award the debate to con, or “boxing win on points”, which would award the debate to pro.

I could go either way, so that indicates to me that the debate is a deW. So I’m going to score this even.

Resolution is king; both sides needed to do more to ground what a technical win would look like: and contrast it with their opponent.

For example, in my view pro needed to argue something like: “a win would be a kill or a knock out; but in context a technical win is like winning on points in boxing”, and con along the lines of “it’s a duel to a the death, a technical win should be when one side clearly bests the other short of a kill”, and then go onto refute or construct based on the baselines each set themselves. Without this, both sides simply argued the other side didn’t match their criteria, without selling me on their criteria.

All points tied.