• By Michael Uugwanga

FORMER World Boxing champion, Harry ‘Terminator/Onkugo’ Simon has revealed to Confidente this week that he is planning on auctioning all his belts won during his professional career in order to raise funds that will go towards constructing a boxing gym.
Simon (50) is a former world champion in two weight classes, having held the World Boxing Organization (WBO) junior middleweight title from 1998 to 2001 and the WBO middleweight title in 2002.
“I have to auction them, because I want to build a boxing gym. I have five belts. I keep asking for help from high profile politicians. It has been like 10 years asking for help but they are taking long. They are not interested. They keep on saying tomorrow, tomorrow for 10 years,” Simon said. 

Simon’s case does not happen in isolation. In most parts of the world, former champions or current champions are known for owning gyms. “Imagine I am the first world champion and I do not have a gym, but some guys are using government building and all that , I even ask myself to be given a piece of land or government building just like others. That is why I ask myself I don’t I just make my own move by auctioning these belts, and the fund that comes out of this I build the gym and start training the youngsters. “I am currently training some youngsters but not from my own gym but in the community hall. I want a gym of my own name. Even if I am no more there, there will be a gym named after the first Namibian world champion,” said Simon. He said he will ask the right people when it comes to auctioning his belts and said that if any town council or  a municipality provide him with a piece of land to construct a gym, he will not mind, even though his initial place of building a gym is Walvis Bay. 

“To auction those belts I need to talk to the right people, maybe when there is a tournament and talk to the people, I will find out who are the right people to talk to. I will first start with the sport minister. The value of a belt depends. I have about five belts. It does not matter where the gym is if there is someone even in the north, Katima Mulilo, Rundu but my thing is to start where I started boxing and that is home in Walvis bay,” said Simon. In 2002, everything changed Simon’s boxing career, following a car crash in which he was involved in, which resulted him found guilty of "culpable homicide" and was sentenced to jail in 2007.  Simon was released from prison in 2009 and lost his world middleweight title owing to injuries sustained from the car accident, being stripped of the belt for failure to defend it.

In 2013 Simon made a came back at the international arena, when he won the vacant International Boxing Federation (IBF) Light Heavyweight title against Geard Ajetović from Serbia and Montenegro in Windhoek, and defended it against him again in 2014.
He remains undefeated in his professional career that saw him making millions of dollars from boxing before losing everything he had worked hard for.

He holds a record of 31 fights, winning all of them, and currently only fights in exhibition fights, notably in the country.
Simon, who was born in Walvis Bay has been applying for land  with the Municipality of Walvis Bay in order to start a boxing gym that will help  him produce future Harry Simon’s a  way of giving  back to a community that has helped him become one of the world’s greatest boxers of all-time.