Is Josh Taylor still beloved by the forum?

He unified a division in 18 fights and most of the fighters he fought were unbeaten and he's fought a lot of punchers too. Unifying a division before most of his peers had even won a world title. People can try and discredit that as much as they want but it's not an easy thing to do at all, especially when you're on a very steep learning curve like he was and if people want to play the let's discredit a fighter's resume game his resume is better or no worse than many of his peer's ones are.

Crawford's second best win in 40 fights is either Postol or Porter and Taylor beat Postol in just his 13th fight in what was his first test against a prime world class opponent and his first time going past 9 rounds. Conversely, Crawford was 28-0 when he beat Postol and it was like his 7th world title fight and he'd also been 10 rounds or more a bunch of times and the full 12 a couple too.

Taylor also beat Porter up in his own gym when he was a 7-0 novice and sent Ugas to the hospital with a damaged jaw during those same sparring sessions, both of whom spoke highly of him.

Beating JCR in the US was a really good win and one which could very easily have been a stoppage one had the home ref not given JCR those long counts, especially one of them.

Rougarou is a good fighter and big puncher . He struggles with back foot rangy boxers which Taylor is obviously not. You stand in front of Rogarou and you play right to his strengths and power and that's what Taylor did.

Postol is a good fighter

Baranchyk was a good fighter and big puncher.

Teofimo would be the best opponent Crawford had ever fought and clearly too had he fought him, let alone if he was a foreigner fighting him in his backyard coming off a loss, inactivity and numerous injuries. That was a stupid fight for Taylor to take given that and let's not forget have gloves won't travel Teofimo was too much of a female dog to fight him in his backyard even when Taylor held all the belts.

JCR 26-0
Rougarou 24-0
Postol 29-1
Baranchyk 19-0
Martin 22-0
Davies 15-0
Teofimo 18-1
Catterall 26-0
Khongsong 16-0

Taylor has clearly declined and leaving McGuigan who understood him and really knew how to get the best out of him was a big mistake. And we know he has a drink problem too.

Taylor was as deserving of being ranked top 5 P4P as Spence was if you want to go down that route. Personally I don't think Spence should ever have been ranked that high but if he deserved it then so to did Taylor for unifying a division in just 18 fights and he was fighting actual career 140 pounders and big punchers for the most part not career fighters from the division below who couldn't wobble a toddler with their Sunday punch.