A well made katana is probably (?) more flexible and less brittle than many european bastard or two handed longswords.

That is to say, they're more likely to deform from bending, from striking or blocking at an improper angle, whereas a stockier european style sword is more likely to crack or shatter generally from hitting something solid too many times or with too much force.

That is a huge generalization though, an in depth look would require a lot more specificity.

One on one katana duels varied in character depending on the nature of the combatants, relative skill levels, level of armor of combatants, overall scenario.

Some duels would be more as you first describe, a drawn out struggle, others were finished in seconds.

I am far from an expert as to the relative commonality of different natures/kinds of one on one duels but they did actually happen with decent regularity, as compared to one on one revolver quick draw duels, which there seems to be no solid evidence of more than a handful of occurences of, and even those are contested.

The quick draw duel trope as we know it today largely comes from A Fistful of Dollars outright doing its best to emulate a fast, one on one or one on many katana engagement scene from Yojimbo, but with revolvers instead.

Such scenes with katanas as depicted in Yojimbo may not be literally historically accurate, but are generally more grounded in reality.

It would kind of be like if that movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Di Caprio, where they just use modern guns that are named 'Longsword' and such for artistic liscense... somehow kicked off a greater cultural trope or meme about how street gangs in the 90s often conducted armed disputes with guns.