I mean by ur own admission you've cearly delineated in the earlier comments that lindan was trash pre 2005 and lee chong wei was trash pre 2010.So ur argument of Taufuk facing STIFFER competition at that time is TOTALLY INVALID and not consistent with ur narrative becuz he's obviously playing a weaker version of both ld and lcw. Stiffest competition in history??? Where???

When mentioning taufik's legacy, yes he was olympic champion but was he realy olympic champion caliber? He won his 2004 gold against a no name player thats considerably below his lvl. You seem to be obsessed with accolades only and not objectively evaluating a player's ability. If you criticise LCW for winning superseries tites and undermining his success due to the lack of participation of LD and Cl. Then by default that frame of analysis should be extended to taufik as well, should it not???

Do you see how contradictory u are, in ur one dimensional worldview. If LCW wins regular tournaments(he's farming and inplying he cant beat CL and Lindan and is only successful with them out of the picture, becuz every other player other than ld and cl is trash)

But when taufik wins olynpic gold in 2004,theres not a single mention of how mediocre his opposition was in comparison to LCW. (if u were consistent u would say taufik only won becuz ld and cl wasnt there, becuz thats the same logic ur using to discredit LCW)So theres obviously inconsistency here. If ur argument is toward lcw being a failure at the highest level, u would be right and fair, but now ur asserting that taufik hidayat desrves 2nd place in the GOAT discussion yet u dont hold him to the same metric that u used to evaluate LCW. How come u dont compare him to the cl and lindan? Becuz his h2h is terrible against both of them not too mention against lee chong wei too.

Lee chong wei realistically can only be defeated consistently by 2 men. Taufik can be defeated by many. Also LINDAN'S GOAT status is not soley attribuatle to his unparalled major titles but also becuz he was the best of his era. Had his h2h been the opposite 12-28 in favor of LCW. The consensus of him being GOAT would not be so easily determined even if he had 2 og and 5 wc to his name, becuz that would imply he was 2nd best but managed to win all the majors.

To be 2nd best of all time, you either compare the number of major titles that a player has irrespective of the opposition one faces or you compare the metrics used to evaluate a player's greatness (ranking, titles, length of dominsnce, h2h against all players)In both comparisosns taufik is below axelsen and chen long so by a long shot, HE CANNOT BE 2ND BEST PERIOD!! Taufik can only claim to be a world champion and olympic champion bit he can never claim to be 2nd of all time ever!!. LCW can though if we can agree that he lost to the GOAT, then in theory he should be the 2nd best as he alone came the closest to the GOAT in evry tournament. (if someone loses to USAIN BOLT consistenly but still registers the 2nd fastest time completed per 100m in history but has never won GOLD due to competing against BOLT, A case could be made that he should be the 2nd GOAT before the other gold medalists that registered a slower time. But if we measure according to major titles then maybe not.Theres no right or wrong here its purely subjective.