Outmatched

I had one of those rare duels yesterday where you don't know until the last moment who is going to win.
Drek Grapper challenged me to a fight in Amamake and I could not refuse. When he arrived at my safespot, I quickly burnt towards him, settling into a tight 500 metre ordbit, overloaded all my weapons and started spewing out Republic Fleet Fusion shells.
Drek Grapper responded with furious fire of his own and our armour melted at about the same rate. I overloaded the repper to keep myself alive for as long as I could. But once armor got really low and then we both got into structure, it became clear my opponent had an advantage.
My Rifter blew up while he still had 81 percent structure.
This is the kind of fights I enjoy the most and I intend to try that again once I get a new setup and maybe improve my skills a bit. EFT says I can still raise my DPS by about 15 percent, although that would require a lot of level V skills.