Yes Arthur is faster than Calloway, but not by much. However Calloway was old and probably still a bit drunk so he might not have been at his best. In his prime I imagine he would have beat Arthur.

Arthur would definitely be faster than Calloway. The idea that he “cheats” is just semantics and merely derives from a gameplay mechanic, not lore.

In his younger days, it’s hard to say how good Calloway was as his quest is more about how tales of gunslingers were largely fabricated.

From the wiki page, again, since people can't fucking read or choose not to:

Calloway has the fastest drawing speed of all NPC duelists in Red Dead Redemption 2, and trying to beat him fairly, by waiting for the draw meter to fully charge, will likely result in the player losing. Even if the player charges the meter as fast as possible and immediately shoots as soon as it has fully charged, it will only cause a draw.

I don't care how good you think you are at a single player game, the code literally prevents you from winning the duel without doing what the game considers cheating.

Does that mean that Arthur has a faster draw speed than Calloway? Technically, yes, because you cheat to win.

@Leon the Lamp42069 how about you watch that video bud! and it’s okay if you can’t kill Calloway you can just cheat by using Dead Eye lmao (which i didn’t)

And since people don’t know how to fucking click on a video or choose not to

You’ll see that I didn’t partially charge the meter and use Dead Eye, Arthur killed him fair and square

Or simply lay diyamite before hand, and ignite it during the duel... simple