Amir Khan Decision Proves Another Bad Case of Alphabet Soup

Many fight fans may not remember Darrin Morris. He was born in Detroit, was a super middleweight and his career spanned 31 fights over 13 years. He had a nice record, 28-2-1, with 18 KOs. He was a rated fighter known as “The Mongoose,” and was once a sparring partner for Sugar Ray Leonard.

He also, unfortunately, died on October 17, 2000 of HIV-related meningitis. He was also rated seventh by the World Boxing Organization at the time of his death. Then rose another two places, to fifth, in 2001.

After he died.

That’s right, after Morris died, he kept climbing up an alphabet organization’s ratings.

What does this have to do with today and the alphabet organizations?

They’re jokes. All of them are raging jokes that have a habit of changing their own rules—tenets they’ve created—to suit their needs. Imagine an organization saying fighters need to abide by rules one-two-three today, and oh, by the way, we’re changing those to rules four-five-six tomorrow. These transient canons seem to be fine to fight promoters, because they fulfill their needs.

Case in point, Lamont Peterson beat Amir Khan last December for that thing the WBA invented called “super champion,” to gather up additional sanctioning fees. Peterson won a controversial split-decision for the WBA’s light welterweight “super championship” title. Then, according to Khan, the WBA decided in its infinite wisdom to reverse its decision and award the title back to Khan.

Now the fighters are scheduled for a rematch on May 19 at Mandalay Bay, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Khan has gone public and said the WBA has named him “super champion” again. If it’s true, it’s another major alphabet sanctioning body screw-up. The operative word being “if.” Peterson was obviously dismayed by this news, but the fact remains, the WBA hasn’t removed Peterson’s name under the “super champion” title.

Some fighters have come out publicly disgusted by this.

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“I personally feel what the W.B.A. has done to Lamont Peterson is a travesty to say the least,” Antonio Tarver commented on his Facebook page regarding the matter.

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Whether there were controversies in the first fight or not they're having the rematch, but to strip this man of his belt before the rematch takes place and insert Amir Khan as champion months later leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If this is the direction the sport I love and respect is headed, then it makes me ashamed to be a part of it.

The [WBA] had enough confidence to appoint the ref and the judges then live with the decision. Don’t go punish this man that went in and laid his heart, guts, sweat and tears on the line. It’s not like he had anything to do with appointing the people that called the fight. Can you imagine if they went back and overturned every decision that the public and fans thought was unjust?

The alphabet organizations are nothing but parasites on the very sport they claim to promote. Ask yourself, how much do you trust the alphabet organization’s ratings? How legitimate can they be when one fighter beats another, and then the fighter that lost gets the belt back? Because there could have been some questions about the very officials they approved in the first place?

How much sense does that make?

In the alphabet world, it makes perfect sense, because they’re loud, scream-from-the-mountaintop mantra has always blared: The rules are, there are no rules!

They claim to supposedly know the sport they’re rating. And somewhere Darrin Morris is laughing hysterically. Four months after he died, he somehow moved up two places in an organization’s ranking system. It’s a glaring example of just how weak the sanctioning bodies are—and how clueless they can be. 

Joseph Santoliquito is a Contributor for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand.