I think you might be right regarding Taylor. He definitely has needle and comes across like a bit of a twat. That said, when was the last time we had a British boxer matched tough, bashing up all the top contenders on the way up and taking all the belts. He’s been our best fighter up to and including the Ramirez fight.
Both Taylor & Ramirez agreed to fight Catterall in return for Catterall stepping aside to allow the undisputed fight to happen as Catterall was the WBO mandatory for Ramirez and that fight had been called.
But Taylor was undisputed at that point, so why not ditch the belts and move up , as he'd been making noise about, instead of having a tricky defence against a slippery fighter, this after a bout with COVID, injury and a bad camp?
Wanted a homecoming fight and probably thought defending all 4 belts would be a better homecoming than fighting at 147 for no belt. It’s all hindsight really… he thought he could beat Catterall easy.
In fairness he couldn't have predicted how badly the run-up would go and it wouldn't be undisputed if he'd postponed it, no doubt he'd have been stripped by at least one of the alphabets. Suspect his ego got in the way and assumed he'd get through it...