Hmm, I see this Mace beating Sidious in that duel spoken of alot, loads of youtube videos have it in the comments, I can understand why ppl think it, also it could be the correct interpretation, however, I felt when I watched the movie, and before I noticed ppl saying this, my initial interpretation watching was that Darth Sidious the Sith Lord was using Mace as a means to luring Anakin to the dark side, by making him choose between the jedi and padme, he was just playing with mace using enough dueling skills to make Mace put effort in so that he could take the fall and appear weak and in need to anakin, putting anakin in a position where he had to either let mace kill Sidious and Padme would die, or stop mace and she would live. I always thought from this interpretation I had made that this ment Sidious was significantly more powerful then mace since he was willing to lose his lightsabre and risk mace striking him, so therefore he must be strong enough in the force that mace posed no danger to him even without his lightsabre. but maybe I just interpreted the scene wrongly.