By Dominic Sikopo
A Namibian Heavyweight Boxer from Katima Mulilo is crying foul after his scheduled fight in Zambia ended up being cancelled as a result of poor planning on the part of promoters.
Mr. Boniface “Tiger” Simasiku (35) was scheduled to fight Mr. Francis Zulu from neighbouring Zambia, Lusaka on the 20th of October 2012.
“We arrived a day before the fight was supposed to take place and I felt very tired because of the long distance from Namibia”, cried Simasiku.
He explained that Kinder Promotions were supposed to take care of his travel arrangements but they did a poor job.
“I feel it was a set up to make the Zambian guy (Zulu) win as I did not even have time to train and prepare for the fight”. He went on to say that he was co-operative with the Zambian promoters Mr. Brian Ngoma (Zulu`s Trainer) and Mr. Mike Ferreira (Zulu`s Manager).
Mr. Simasiku stated that things started to go wrong when they arrived as there was no proper accommodation prepared for his camp.
“We were just told that we would be staying in a boy`s hostel which isn’t fit for a boxer”. He said that he only had about an hour and 30 minutes’ rest before he had to undergo medicals.
“The medical tests took very long.”
He explained that he was supposed to be taken to the gym to train but the other camp refused at the last minute, “when our camp tried to find out what was going on we were just told there was a gym available at our place when clearly there was nothing”, cried Mr. Simasiku .
Mr. Simasiku` s trainer contacted them but were told to take their bags and go fight.
He added that his team came back from Zambia on the 24th of October 2012 after they decided to have the fight cancelled. Rumours are now doing the rounds that Mr. Simasiku “chickened out” of the fight, “I did not chicken out, they(Zambian camp set me up to lose the fight”, an angry Mr Simasiku said.
Mr. Simasiku also lays some of the blame on his promoter, because he has allegedly kept silent since their return trip from Zambia. “We as the boxers have agreed that the fight has to happen, it`s up to the promoters to put things together as I will be looking forward to the fight, he concluded”.
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