@anthp2000:
I see no reason to assume either of that; Azula simply did that against a highily skilled warrior, one trained since she was eight and having more experience than Zuko in non-bending combat, whose second weapon of choice was the katana. Of course it's going to look like she's "broadly leaving herself open", or that she "overextended herself" because she was disarmed. Anyone swordsman disarmed would look that way at that moment. Wether it's Suki or Piandao.
My assumption stems from the fact that Suki does much better against Ty Lee with her hands than she does against Azula with her sword. The difference in her performances is comically vast, so unless you think Azula is better than Ty Lee to that degree (which nothing in the lore supports to my knowledge; Ty Lee is depicted as more athletically gifted in "Zuko Alone" and "The Boiling Rock"), then I think the safer assumption is that Suki's specialty lies in her hand-to-hand martial arts and her fans, and the katana is simply a fallback option she is nowhere near as trained in. I don't think this is a case of "Any one swordsman disarmed would look that way at that moment" - Suki unnecessarily leans into her lunge, which to me (granted, I don't have any experience in swordsmanship; I'm just going off of intuition) seems like an amateurish mistake. Now, you can simply blame the choreographers, of course, but I feel that if the intent was for her to be equally capable with a blade as with the rest of her arsenal, that would have been shown here, but it wasn't. This is the only time she even wields a katana, to my knowledge, which reinforces the idea she's more comfortable with her fans and hands.
Now, broad swords are a different style of fighting than a katana -- and they are more suited to slashing and chopping, rather than cutting and stabbing. But my point was that this is a fantasy universe, and a better fighter is in position to disarm a swordsman, and could probably do so here. Azula actually dealt with Zuko when he was using his fire daggers -- not really the same, but as close as it could get -- without using any bending. To the point where she was toying with him by aiming in between his attempts and targeting his arms. That's just as much speed and lethality, with only slightly less reach.
It's not really "as close it could get"; daggers have significantly less reach than broadswords - Azula is not going to have nearly as easy of a time targeting Zuko's wrists. And the weapon difference matters in terms of his skill as well - by all indication, Zuko has trained more with swords than with daggers. Not to mention that he was emotionally unbalanced in that fight, yelling and easily taking the bait, which is not how he operates in Book Three.
We've seen lesser swordsmen disarmed or fought against by unarmed folk a lot of the time. Zuko took on the pirates' leader in hand to hand combat by, again, simply targetting his arms, equipped Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom military and Kyoshi Warriors were taken down by fighters like Ty Lee. Katara's waterbending of the skin she carries has been compared by Sifu Kisu to a samurai or cane sword, and Ty Lee dealt with that quite effectively. Even Sokka using his machete could defend against a seasoned Rough Rhino who tore apart a larger-than-life stone statue with a few swift swings, and spears, which are realistically a lot more dangerous than swords, were often treated like nothing by the best martial artists of the series. And while we did not see swords in the strict, traditional fashion in Korra's time, we've seen this philosophy incorporated. Korra should have absolutely no business fighting a man larger than her armed with electrified kai sticks, but she took him down using limited firebending, because she was that good. We've also seen glimpses of this in bending battles; Suyin closed in on Kuvira and performed a takedown on her while Kuvira was using a metal sword, because she was the superior martial artist. There's no "proof", but I think that if a fighter is meant to be better than Zuko, they'd be able to take him down, regardless of the weapons involved. And even as an excellent swordsman, he was definitely not painted as nearly as efficient as his sister and her friends, or Suki, who could match them, in my personal opinion.
I don't feel like going through the effort to check everything you cited, so I'll take your word for it and assume they are fair examples. And the overall pattern you bring up is fair too. It's possible Azula or Ty Lee could indeed beat Zuko here. However, I don't think his first encounter with the former is a good indicator to use for the aforementioned reasons. In general, I don't think this match is nearly as clear-cut or one-sided as you and some others are making it out to be (you may not have meant that, but that's how I read your posts). Besides the obvious advantage Zuko has with having his swords compared to his adversaries being unarmed, swordsmanship is his secondary element after fire. He's going to be more competent with them than with his hands or daggers. Whether that's enough to outmatch the likes of Ty Lee or Azula or not is probably not knowable with any amount of certainty, but I feel it should be a close fight either way.
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