I would put my money on Miyamoto Musashi,
if they had the samurai wearing heaver armor they are way off 
not that I lived back then and know 100%, but as far as I know Samurai armor was mostly bamboo.
This is something of a myth. Rest assured that bamboo would make a poor armor in terms of protection offered compared to the burden it would impose. Japanese armor typically consisted of small iron plates laced together and lacquered against rust, gradually evolving to include larger pieces of plate. The scale-type armor is somewhat heavier than either maille or European plate in relation to area of the body covered, the plate armor is approximately equivalent. It seems to have been about as effective at rendering the cutting edge of the sword impotent as European armor was...interestingly, I've seen demonstrations Koryu techniques that are similar to Medieval European sword arts in their penchant for techniques for attacking relatively poorly protected/vulnerable areas (counter-striking at hands or exposed legs, thrusting for the exposed face/eyes, armpit, elbow gap, groin, etc). This is distinct from the disemboweling/head splitting/decapitating they like to depict in movies but which in reality would only result in ineffectively striking the most heavily protected areas of the body.
I personally believe the Japanese Samurai, were the greatest warriors of all time, Miyamoto was the greatest of them all.
I also think Bruce Lee read his book "the Book Of Five Rings" and built his "jute kune do" from that. (That is a great read BTW.)
The dedication of the Oriental people, in all that they do is amazing.
This is also something of a myth. When you get past Hollywood, there is nothing particularly superior about Japanese weapon or unarmed martial arts...or really anybody's martial arts, you see the same techniques over and over again. Convergent evolution. Longsword and katana technique is sometimes eerily similar, but it is logical that two peoples trying to solve the same problem (how to kill an opponent with a two-handed sword, in and out of armor) would come up with similar solutions. And when you look you end up seeing similar things in Fillipino martial art, Chinese martial art, etc.
One thing about the Medieval Japanese warrior culture though is that they were insular, isolated, and *never* had much chance to either clash or cross-pollinate with the warriors of other lands. A Medieval Japanese army faced outsiders exactly once, in a battle with the invading Mongols, in which the Japanese forces were driven from the field. Japan was saved from Mongol domination by a quirk of the weather. Of course, one great benefit of this isolationism and Japanese preservationism is that the martial arts revolving around their obsolete weapons have been more fully preserved into the modern era than those of many other cultures.
Bruce Lee based his personal fighting style which he presents in "The Tao of Jeet Kune Do" upon three principle sources: Wing Tsun Kung-Fu, Western boxing, and Western fencing, the latter which Lee found so fascinating and useful that the name for his martial art, "Way of the Intercepting Fist", refers to the stop-thrust concept from fencing. Musashi is claimed by some to have been inspired to devise his method of wielding the katana and wakizashi by watching Portuguese sailors fence with sword and dagger, though this is impossible to prove either way. The thing that is for certain is that his book of Five Rings is highly critical of martial art in practiced in Japan at the time and Musashi seems to have had his own ideas. All we really know about Musashi's greatness is that he probably won a large number of single combats, but the same thing can be said Fiore de Liberi or Johannes Liechtenauer.
