"I think boxing is really losing out, maybe not yet at the high level, but what I would like to do is put on great shows. I'll get fighters who are driven, hungry, who just want to fight. It's getting to the point where fighters just don't want to fight. I've seen this trying to get an opponent for Fres. It's all about money or people duck out of fights. I just don't think they're hungry anymore or care about fighting. What I'm going to try to do to fix boxing is make the fights more interesting and competitive, make the event more of a show. I want my first card to be a show, not just a fight card with boring guys…That's what we're going to do, put on a great card and take good care of the fighters. We'll give bonuses for knockouts. We'll operate as a salesman does; if you get enough sales, we're going to pay you more money. We won't go out there and snooze people like Valuev does. That's not going to bring any fans," stated Hitz Boxing President Tom Tsatas as he talks about his new foray into promoting as he gets set for his first event on February 20th. Check out what he had to say about the event and how he plans on making a difference in the sport of boxing.

MJ: Tell us about what you have going on right now.

TT: This is my first event in the promotion aspect of it; Bob [Hitz] has done hundreds of shows. He's hired me to be the president of Hitz Boxing. I've done the training and coaching aspect of boxing, and now I'm moving into more of promoting and managing. We have an event coming up at the Horseshoe Casino on February 20. We have Fres Oquendo in the main event. Right now he's defending his NABA title and this will hopefully be for the USBA title, which should get him in the top 7 or 8 in the rankings if he wins. We have an Irish guy by the name of Henry Coyle, we have former UFC star at middleweight, now fighting at cruiserweight, Terry Martin. We have Johnny Lewus and young prospect Achour Esho, so it's a pretty stacked card. We'll try to put on a great show.

MJ: Can you give us your thoughts going into your first card?

TT: I see what MMA is doing and I see what is going on between boxing and MMA. I think what MMA has done is a great job of marketing, almost like wrestling. You see the kind of people wrestling and MMA are getting. You have a guy from Siberia, Fedor Emelianenko, who speaks no English, comes to Chicago and gets 15,000 people in the Sears Center. If you go to a boxing event and get 500 people to a small show, you are lucky. I think boxing is really losing out, maybe not yet at the high level, but what I would like to do is put on great shows. I'll get fighters who are driven, hungry, who just want to fight. It's getting to the point where fighters just don't want to fight. I've seen this trying to get an opponent for Fres. It's all about money or people duck out of fights. I just don't think they're hungry anymore or care about fighting. What I'm going to try to do to fix boxing is make the fights more interesting and competitive, make the event more of a show. I want my first card to be a show, not just a fight card with boring guys.

MJ: As a promoter, what would you say is the most difficult part of putting on a show? Is it negotiating fighter contracts, logistics, something else?

TT: Getting people in the seats and getting guys out there. The whole thing is difficult. You're selling ice to eskimos. Everyone wants to go watch MMA after what they've seen. The young kids all watch MMA. They know who Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar are. Mention James Toney, no one knew who he was anymore until he mentioned he wanted to fight Kimbo Slice. Is it because Kimbo's talented? No, it's because he's been marketed and he's on Spike TV and he fights in the UFC. Don't get me wrong, I'm a die-hard boxing fan, but I'm also open-minded to what's going on in the world. MMA is taking over. Unless boxing does something to change that, boxing is going by the wayside. I'm not looking at MMA as a negative; I'm looking at it as something where we can use what they've done right to bring boxing to where it should be. I think boxing is a better, more talented, technical sport, but people don't know that. I think that's what you need to do.

MJ: Are you going to be the type of promoter that will try to get some deals with a network station or push boxing along a more mainstream television line of thought?

TT: Yeah, you've got ESPN, who's choosing what they want. I think there are a lot better fights that can be on ESPN and Versus. One week, they're doing boxing, sometimes they say to check back with them. Unless you're doing HBO or Showtime, there's not much to go on television. If we can't get these networks to do it, we'll start off with a Comcast or local cable, producing your own shows and selling your own sponsorships. Television really helps with the money aspect of it, but if you don't have it, it doesn't mean that you don't put on a great event. You tell your fighters that you may not make the kind of money that you will on television, but if we build a grassroots or gorilla marketing and put on great shows, people will hear about them. That's what we're going to do, put on a great card and take good care of the fighters. We'll give bonuses for knockouts. We'll operate as a salesman does; if you get enough sales, we're going to pay you more money. We won't go out there and snooze people like Valuev does. That's not going to bring any fans.

MJ: How is the promotional game changing with a lot of these fighters trying to start their own promotional companies?

TT: I think that if you bartend, you bartend. If you're a busboy, you bus tables. If you're a waiter, you wait tables. If you're a fighter, you should fight. If you're a promoter, you should promote and do a good job of it. My personal opinion, looking from the outside in, Floyd tried to do this Marquez thing on his own and didn't do so well. I know he said that he broke his wrist, but I personally think he's not a promoter and should stick to fighting. You have guys like Golden Boy and some others that do it, but you also have businessmen running your company for you. Bob Arum is a promoter. I think Richard Schaefer is really doing a good job with guys behind him. I think a fighter should stick to fighting and get himself a good attorney and be smart about how he does deals and let promoters who are business people do the promoting. You can do whatever you want, it's a free country, but I think in order to be successful, you really need to have somebody. That's why football has owners. Football players can try to own teams, but they should stick to playing football if they're smart. That's what I think.

MJ: For your promotional company, are you going to look to sign fighters from one region or will you look to branch out?

TT: I think with what's happening in boxing, there are not enough cards out there to sign too many fighters. And some get put on the shelf. My experience is that fighters want to fight. Some guys want to fight for money, others to keep busy, some a combination of both. With Bobby Hitz as my partner and being in his company, my motto is that you don't want to lose money, but you want to invest in your fighters from a business point of view. I think what we want to do is get two or three guys that have some experience and are good enough to get put on television, start building up the guys from the bottom that we think are going to go somewhere, and get a few guys in the middle that maybe will or won't be champions, but will give you good, exciting fights. At the end of the day, that's what matters, getting the right guys. If there's a Polish guy who can bring in Polish fans and he's good, then you throw him out there in a competitive fight. Whether he wins or loses, if he gives his all, people will come. Look at Ward-Gatti; they put on a lot more exciting fights than Floyd ever did. That's what I think we'd like to do, sign two or three guys that are there and maybe want to leave somebody else and have potential, two or three guys in the middle that bring in people, and a couple of guys that have potential to go somewhere and build from there, instead of just signing twenty guys. We'll get a lot of loyalty from our fighters; that's my thing. Loyalty is most important.

MJ: What's going to be your niche that separates you from the other promoters out there?

TT: I'd like to concentrate on the event and the fighters and then go from there. We'd like to establish ourselves where the show is done well. We don't just slap something together and throw it out there just to say we're doing an event. Of course you want to make money, but for me, I want to put on the perfect show. The lighting, the way it looks, getting the fans in there, filling up the stadium, putting on a good fight, that's what I want. It's quality vs. quantity.

MJ: Is there anything else you'd like to tell the FightHype.com readers in closing?

TT: If you guys are close, come check us out on February 20. We're going to put on a good card. Keep supporting the sport of boxing; it's a great sport and we don't want it to go away because of the wrong people doing the wrong thing.