Interview Dated 2005

Gary Simon

Gary Simon is someone who, at first glance, might not appear to fit into the Houston Boxing Scene, or any boxing scene for that matter. With a slight built, glasses and easygoing charm, he just seems like he should be an accountant, or maybe selling real estate, not caught up in what some see as the seedy underbelly of the fight world. But appearances can of course be deceiving, because Gary Simon was once one of the top up and coming pro boxers in Houston. Since the 1970's he's explored just about every facet of the game: from being a fighter, to working with promoters to now being a trainer/manager.

HBS--How'd you get interested in or involved in boxing?

GS - My uncle actually introduced me to a gentleman by the name of A.T. Gomez and he was a longtime boxing competitor and also a trainer back in the 40's and 50's. So I started when I was 11 and actually competed at 13. It's just been a labor of love ever since.

HBS - How was your amateur career?

GS - Decent. Won two Golden Glove titles here in Houston. In 1980 I won the regional championship at 125 pounds. In '82 I won the 125 again in open and went to state. Then I turned pro June 1st of 1982.

HBS - How did that go?

GS - Went real well. I was 9-0 with 7 knockouts and at that point they matched me with a gentlemen I had already beatenin a 12 round main event for the Texas Lightweight Championship. Great fight. Came up on the short end of the stick. But it left a lot of great boxing memories. I didn't really prepare properly for that fight. I took a lot of things for granted but such is life. The fighter's name was Reginald Watson, known as "Skeeter".

HBS - You were boxing around the time when a woman named Josephine Abercrombie was involved in boxing in Houston. Who was she?

GS - Josephine Abercrombie was, in '82 and '83 whenI first came to know her, she was one of the three richest women in the U.S. She was with Cameron Ironworks, Exxon, so she had a lot of involvement here. She started a promotional team by the name of H.B.A., Houston Boxing Association and built a phenomenal facility, way ahead of its time, state-of-the-art on Newcastle & 59, in that vicinity. I signed with her after I lost the championship fight I came back, won a couple of fights and then I signed a six-fight package with her along with other fights known as Ray Sims, Cedric Rose. We were all before the '84 Olympic team which involved Frank Tate and just a world of boxing champions thereafter. But we fought in these venues I wasn't used to fighting in, what was now the Compaq, The Summit, we fought in the Astro Arena and we had a big budget with Schlitz Ringleader. They were our promoters.

HBS - What did your pro record eventually turn out to be?

GS - Ended up finishing with a 14-3 record, retired at the ripe old age of 25.

HBS - Who was your trainer and where did you work out? I guess you were with Ray Ontiveros?

GS - When I left the '81 Golden Gloves I came up the short end of the stick that year I decided to make a change. That change led me to Ray Ontiveros, and he's more well-known to be Rocky Juarez's trainer. From that point things really began to change because I really began to expand on my amateur experience. From that point I turned pro with Ray in June of '82 and we had a great ride. Didn't have a super duper ending but it was a great ride.

HBS - You had indicated you got out probably before some other people would have liked to have seen you get out.

GS - Right. I had some great opportunities during that time but I had made a commitment to myself, my trainer and my family that I was going to box professional for three years and that was it. If I wasn't at a certain level in three years then it would probably take me five years to even get close to a championship. Kirk, I could be way off the mark but I had to set a goal. I met my goal and I stuck to my guns.

HBS - So as a pro what weight did you fight?

GS - My regular weight was as 130 pounds but we challenged the (Texas) Lightweight Championship at 135. Five pounds doesn't seem like a lot but it can make a difference. That's when they were 12 rounds.

HBS - You're a fairly tall guy, you must have had the reach advantage on most of the guys you fought.

GS - I'm 5'9" and I did have the advantage, and back then, 25 years ago that was the trick. If you could shrink your body, maintain your height then you had the advantage. Let me tell you we did a lot of hard training for weight loss. We didn't have the knowledge or we didn't have the ability to get the right people around us to show us through nutrition and proper diet and exercise. We would but 7, 8, 12 pounds overweight eight days before a fight and just crash and we would purge, whatever it took to get it off, run, work out 18 hours a day if it took it.

HBS - Your style then?

GS - A boxer/puncher. First nine fights I had seven knockouts, pretty much with guys with .500 or better records I'd like to believe. Met a lot of good styles, met a lot of good people and I always had in the back of my mind if I wasn't going to make it as a world champion that I would find someone I would make a world champion and I actually had a chance in '95 to go with David Gonzalez to fight Terry Norris for the Jr. Middleweight Championship.

HBS - Let's stay back in the early 80's and describe if you will the Houston boxing scene back then. It was sort of divided into certain camps or groups.

GS - You figure when I came on the scene in '77 the only gym that I introduced to was Bimbo's Gym on Congress. Hugh Bimbo owned that gym. That was THE pro gym. As a matter of fact when Ali started his movie "The Greatest", he filmed much of it there. There was Ray's Gym, there was always Galena Park, Galena Park always had a phenomenal program. There were always rivals and some of the best fighters in Texas I believe in my heart in that time came right out of Houston. You had the Ronald Haines, you had the Reginald Robinsons, these guys are forgotten today but then they had won everything in the amateurs and just didn't quite didn't develop as a pro like they did as an amateur. But we had a lot of cross-town rivals and thank goodness for John English, Bill Pie, those guys started club fights in a place called the Esquire Ballroom. It's still there, it's under a different name but it was off of the Hempstead Highway and it was real crusty. It was beer drinkin' bar room brawls, the whole nine yards, I mean everything you wanted in a club fight and many of these clubs when they decided turn their top amateurs professional got started in that club. And I'm proud to say I fought most of my fights there up until the point I fought with Abercrombie.

HBS - Then you took some time off?

GS - I took about three years off, I went back to school, went back to the community college and got a full-time job in the travel industry and began to do a complete 180-degree turn from the grueling boxing sport to walking in an office, putting a suit on every day and hitting the books and working every day and trying to sell vacations so it was quite a transition. Boxing is like a drug addiction. It will draw you back and it has a strong, strong magnetic field if you get caught into it. I came back to the gym in '89 and started over in what was The Heights Boxing Gym. Met up with David Gonzales and started work with him as an assistant trainer and we worked and worked and worked and I worked with amateurs until we finally got a title shot in '95.

HBS - What happened?

GS - We could have fought Pernell Whitaker which would have been the right choice at 147 but David was rated #1 for three years in a row and no one didn't want to have anything to do with him. So then we ended up moving up to junior middleweight. Don King made it a really nice deal. It just happened to be Terry Norris and it seemed like we were born at the wrong time. I believe he beat us in ten rounds, stopped us.

HBS - Now you've got a stable of three or four heavyweights that you're working with.

GS - After David I fought, we had a great run, I stepped out of the picture for about a year and a half. I came back and started working for promoters, still with the intention of working with fighters. Finally I landed Billy Willis, Darrell Provo, Michael Hamilton, they're all living in obscurity right now but they're pretty good. They're three tough heavyweights right now on a local basis I think that could do something. I've been very fortunate to be able to work with them.

HBS - Describe your boxing/training philosophy with them.

GS - The first thing is as far as a conditioning regimen is they have to love to run. That's an absolute necessity for a heavyweight. And most heavyweights, respectfully, don't like to run. They use the excuse of jumping rope and so on. But we'll be running at least three days a week. No less than three days a week. We spar about the same amount. The other days we put a lot of time in on the equipment. Heavy bags we work the entire program at the gym. Heavy bags, speedbags, double end bags, focus mitts and consistency is the key. "Hit and not get hit" is the real science behind it. We just do it one day at a time. That's all we can do. One fight at a time. I'm letting these guys manage themselves right now because collectively they've got about three fights between the three of them. So I'm just giving it time. Hopefully in time if we stir up enough noise in different parts of the country, not just in Houston, I'm trying ot move them from Austin, to in this case Springfield, Missouri. If we can stir up enough commotion maybe we can break into the top 20.

HBS - So tell us about your philosophy for bringing a boxer along and improving his record.

GS - The proper way if there is such a thing would be, if your fighter has time. If he's in his late 20's and he's a heavyweight he still has time, he's still young. If you can take your time with him, get him the right fights, get him fihts that he'll learn from and improve from, if he's not coming from an extensive amateur background with international experience, then you've got to take the route of building with the right fights. He doesn't have to win every single fight. You would like him to. You'l like him to have a perfect record, 7,8, 10 and 0 in a perfect world but it doesn't work that way. And then slowly but surely start picking guys and finding matchmakers out there that will let go of their fighters and challenge them and in turn get a decent payday. A decent payday in this case, Kirk would be mabe $10,000, maybe $15,000 if you're lucky. Because unless you're a house fighter, and a house fighter is somebody that is promoted by Don King, Bob Arum or Main Events, you're basically going to be on the same scale for the last 30 years. About $150 a round.

HBS - So you are an interesting guy in that you seem to know everybody in town but you're not aligned with anybody.

GS - (Laughs)....You offer great questions. There's a lot of good people out there, a lot of good trainers, good managers. It just seems for me, you consider I've been in this since I was 11. I actually saw a lot of great fighters start fast and burn out quickly. I'm not saying I have the experience. I have some experience. I know a little. I've taken a few ideas from different people, different philosophies and things and I've got a few of my own. I don't want to rush anything. There is no rush. I'm 41 years old and I'm glad to be here. (laughs). But I believe the only analogy I can give you with a professional boxer is it's like wine. You don't make wine in one day. And to get it through these fighters' heads that they don't have to go out and knock everybody out in one calendar year, they can take their time, is a true challenge for me.

HBS - There's the question of whether boxing is a corrupt sport in which it seems it might as well be the World Wrestling Federation in that the outcomes sometimes appear to be predetermined. Some people say it needs more regulation on a federal level both to ensure that decisions are fair and to also protect boxers in various ways. What are your thoughts on that? There's that Ali amendment...

GS - That referendum came from Senator McCain as well as some others...yes and no. Take my conservatism out of it. The federal government can do a job, but will they do a good job? Regulation to a certain degree. Cleaning up, absolutely. Fighters' pay scales have to be increase because medicals are becoming more costly. Look at our health care now. So if we can get this referendum, if we can look at it, and we can get 80% of the people on the same page then we have a shot at it. But I have a serious feeling that the powers that be, and those people are the Don Kings, the Bob Arums and those guys, they're going to have a lot to say about this because my thoughts on it are, there's only two classes in professional boxing: filthy rich and dirt poor. There's not a lot of middle class. So do we need some changes? Absolutely.
Muhammad Ali Reform Act the answer? Maybe a start. I would like to see fighters get pensions. I would like to see them have something to fall back on. Regressing back to David Gonzales. He probably made $250,000 in his career and he has absolutely nothing and he's a liability of the government because he's on Social Security now, disability. It's a vicious cycle and I think it does need to be looked at.