I believe he was competitive vs Paulie. So it comes down to how we define top boxers, Floyd certainly can't be the standard.
meh, we've never seen a video of the full match.
plus Paulie was retired, like 35yo and def on the downside of his career when he retired.
And in this case we're talking about fucking Lomachenko. Conor is not going to be competitive.
I know Conor's match was against Floyd Mayweather, but regardless of Floyd's skills Conor was making fundamental mistakes with his footwork. He has bad habits from MMA in regards to clinching and taking the back. When Floyd ducked low Conor didn't know what to do, he was literally confused, because that doesn't happen in MMA. Conor resorted to throwing shitty hammerfists to the back of Floyd's head, instead of say, taking an angle and going to the body or something.
It's not that Conor isn't a good puncher, or that he's not a good boxer. It's that there are habits he's developed for MMA that do not translate to boxing. It's that there are crutches he relies on in MMA that are taken away. It's that he hasn't spent the last 10 years developing good fundamentals for boxing, and he's stuck THINKING about boxing, instead of flowing and reacting. Couple all that with the fact that Conor is on the lower end of the weight spectrum. The skill level is so high, Conor just won't be able to catch up. Much like MMA an athletic power puncher might be able to crack the top at HW, but that's not going to fly in the lower weights.
I suppose it depends exactly what we mean by top fighters. To me that means maybe top 20 in the world. And Conor would never legit make that ranking in boxing.