u/AlexCora

Obviously, lightsaber combat isn't a hard art form. It's not literally rock, paper, scissors with strict rules and outcomes of "this style must always defeat this style". But there is certainly an element of that at play, with certain styles seemingly having natural advantages over others. Which makes me wonder why the "MMA" form of lightsaber combat is pretty definitely the most useless one. Literally dismissed as the "diplomats" form. Only taught as a sort of grab bag of the basics of all the forms for Jedi who are more interested in anything else other than lightsaber combat. It's a crash course in how to be a little mid at everything. Including blaster deflection, thus no Niman survivors in the Colleseum.

That's kind of weird to me. Shouldn't THE play as a lightsaber duelist to become the best Niman master possible? You're not always going to be in a situation where you happen to be dueling a favorite fight for a Djem So or Ataru specialist. It would be incredibly helpful if you are for example fighting Dooku, and you're able to quickly switch gears into a Djem So Ataru hybrid style like Anakin uses to hammer the count with those powerful bone shattering counter attacks, while minimizing the usual lack of mobility weakness of Djem So. Basically, depending on who and what you are fighting, to be able to adapt into the perfect hybrid style that happens to counter exactly what the enemy is doing and counters their strengths and highlights their weaknesses for you to best exploit. Maybe even if that's changing forms mid fight like pressuring with Makashi bladework only to shock the enemy with some out of nowhere Ataru agility.

I'm pretty sure in the Canon Revan had something like this. Basically a form of Niman so adaptable and at such a high level that it became it's own approach. If I'm a boxer and my striking is elite that's wonderful, but if I'm suddenly thrown into a fight with an elite level wrestler... I'm going to find myself in serious trouble if I don't adapt and fast.