The former WBC and WBA lightweight champion was at ringside last month to see Taylor solve the riddle that is Miguel Vazquez and knock out the ex-IBF lightweight champion in nine rounds.
That result keeps the 26 year old from Edinburgh in the rankings of both the WBC (No 6) and IBF (No 11).
Taylor has his next fight pencilled in either February or March, depending how quickly the cut on his left eyebrow he picked up against Vazquez heals, and looks likely to challenge for world honours sometime in 2018.
Buchanan believes he will win a version of the 10 stones championship and possibly go on to emulate Ricky Burns.
#TBT 🏴@JoshTaylorBoxer 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/mOV2N6pBZv
— Cyclone Promotions (@CyclonePromo) November 16, 2017
Burns, mooted as a possible opponent for Taylor, is in the record books as the first Scottish fighter, and only the third from Britain after Bob Fitzsimmons and Duke McKenzie, to win world titles at three weights.
“Josh can be a world champion, definitely,” said Buchanan, whose reign as world champion was brought to an end by Roberto Duran in 1972.
“Josh has the ability and looking at the size of him, he can win titles at welterweight and maybe even super-welterweight as well.
“If he puts on weight, it will be muscle, not fat.
“There are so many opportunities out there for fighters these days and if you have an amateur pedigree like Josh has, you can be moved on quickly and get a world-title fight quicker than you could years ago.
“I watched Josh box in the amateurs on club shows years ago and I always used to think: ‘He could be good.’ Josh can put it on you, bring the punches up well, and he can box in and out.”
The expectation was that Taylor’s next step towards the world championship would be a European-title challenge.
He was at ringside in Leicester last Saturday night to watch Swedish left-hander Anthony Yigit keep the belt with a unanimous points win over Joe Hughes in front of the Channel Five cameras.
The Sauerlands-promoted Yigit afterwards said that rather than fight Taylor next, he was hoping for a world-title shot or may even move down to lightweight.
Perhaps his reluctance to fight the Scot is understandable.
The whisper from the gym is that when they sparred a year or so ago when Yigit was based in London with CJ Hussein at his gym in St Pancras, Taylor got the better of it – and he also has an amateur win over the Swede.
They met in the final of a Multi-Nations tournament at London’s ExCel Arena in November, 2011 – and Taylor won 13-10.
He beat Australia’s Jeff Horn, now the WBO welterweight champion, in the last four in the same tournament and went on to box in the London Olympics and win Commonwealth Games gold before turning over with Cyclone Promotions in 2015.
Taylor has been pushed along quickly, beating hardened, but rusty Dave ‘Rocky’ Ryan for the vacant Commonwealth title in only his seventh fight and he broke into the world rankings this summer with a comprehensive thrashing of Ohara Davies that brought him the WBC Silver title.
Barry McGuigan, head of Cyclone Promotions, is impressed by Taylor’s “punch placement, power, intelligence and pace. He jumps up from second to fifth gear, back down to second gear and then up to seventh gear.
“He has all that – and he desperately wants to win.
“Josh knows that sometimes you have to win ugly. Vazquez was a difficult opponent. His feet are all over the place, he jumps in and out and he has a herky-jerky style
“You never know where his head or his hands are going to be, but Josh figured him out and knocked him out.”
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