Watching old fights, Shane was a small guy. Even vs de la Hoya he looked miniature, of course mind you Oscar has a huge back. But hey his Mosley, arms are Iong. remember there was a narrative in that fight, that Oscar should jab to break mosleys back. He was complaining to his corner that his back but he sucked it up and won the fight. Back to my question, Tito did it, Oscar did it, not sure why winky wright didn't do it, but why didn't Mosley fight Hopkins? Imagine if the prime Hopkins was still reigning as champ persay. I bet you Pacquiao would call him out knowing he called out triple g.
Winky did fight B-Hop, eventually (albeit years later, a couple of divisions up with some belt-on-the-line catch-weight nonsense) Mosley and B-Hop never got closer in weight than when they were at super welter and middle respectively, near the conclusion of Hopkins' title reign. ODLH moved up to face Sturm at MW and then Hopkins. Mosley could've maybe followed suit except for the fact that a) soon Hopkins would lose twice against Taylor and head up to LHW, never again making 160 and b) Shane himself lost to Winky twice around then. Now, you could ask why SSM didn't get a chance to move up and challenge the MW champ before ODLH, but despite getting the better of him 2-0 in their rivalry Shane was simply never the mainstream global star Oscar was. Money talks, so Bernard was always going to prefer to sit and wait for a jumped-up DLH rather than Mosley for less reward and possibly higher risk. Bottom line, there was only ever a brief window that saw them in adjacent weight classes and it didn't happen then (around 2003-5) because reasons.
And Mosley should be thankful. Hops beats him worse than he beat DLH. Maybe doesn't KO him, but from a technical standpoint, he gets embarrassed. DLH was a better boxer.
I think mosley realized he wasnt that big of a puncher above welterweight. He was putting on a lot of muscle to make junior middle and it was effecting his punching power - he confirmed this recently in an interview and discussed how he regained his punching power when he moved back down to welter. He may have looked stronger and more bulked up but it impeded those fast twitch muscles he used to generate power. He would have been way too small to fight hopkins and didnt have the boxing savvy to outfox the wiley veteran. Hopkins at this point would beat the **** out of you on the outside and the inside, was physically very strong for the weight and knew every trick in the book. He would have neutralized Shane's assets, roughed him up on the inside and outboxed him on the outside. It would have been a bad night for Mosley had they fought.
Oh - and had it gone down Hopkins would have probably 117-111'ed him, IMO. That body shot that felled Oscar might have put Shane down but not all the way out.
