American Boys Ready For Battle
By Mike LeTourneau

Allen and Jason Litzau are primed and ready to fight this Friday night at Aldrich Arena. Allen is set to do battle with Ricardo DeLeon, while Jason takes on his most seasoned opponent to date in Isidro Tejedor. With the fight just four days away, MinnesotaBoxing.com decided to check in with the American Boys and Bob Van Syckle to see how things were going.

On training for the upcoming card:

A. Litzau: Training has been going great. Jason just got back from New Jersey, because he was at training camp. I've been here hustling tickets and training. It's going good. I feel good. I've been doing a lot of running, going from my house down to Phalen Lake and back, which is about 4 or 5 miles. And getting in a lot of boxing.

On the increase in rounds for their fights:

A. Litzau: We've had to pump up the sparring, but as far as training, we always train hard.

J. Litzau: We train like champions. Our manager always tells us, "you guys train like you're training for world titles," so we haven't had to change much. So now we've even had to back off a bit. We never used to take days off. Now we do.

On fighting along with Matt Vanda:

J. Litzau: It's a dream come true. Because of our cousin Johnny (John Drury), Matt was always cool to us. We knew it was just a matter of time before it happened.

A. Litzau: My cousin John always said, "you guys are going to be on a show together one of these days." Now he's up in Heaven and gets to watch down on us.

J. Litzau: This was Johnny's dream. It's what Johnny wanted.

On Jason fighting Bernard Dunne:

J. Litzau: We were trying to call him out but he refused the fight.

B. Van Syckle: He refused the fight. He's 12-0 and it was going to be on NBC, and they wouldn't take the fight.

J. Litzau: That fight will eventually happen and he'll be beat. They don't want me, because Sugar Ray Leonard had me on one of his cards and he knows who me and my brother are.

On Allan and Darby Smart:

A. Litzau: We were supposed to fight on April 9th, we sent him a contract and they said they weren't ready yet. Hopefully, on the next card we put on, it will be me and him. We were even going to pay him more than me.

On finding solid opponents:

B. Van Syckle: It has nothing to do with no commission. It's all from an opponent's point of view. If you're a good fighter, why would you want to risk your won-loss record against Jason when only 1,000 people are going to see it? They would rather do it when it's on TV. You're not going to get anyone who's undefeated to come in here. The guys who are ..500 fighters, they want to come in here and get paid if they're going to fight in somebody else's hometown. So you have to fly them in and pay them well. It's expensive. You need to have a lot of people show up so we can pay to get better fighters in.

J. Litzau: Here we go. We got us all teamed up. Here we are together working as a team. Now we just need the fan support. If we can get the fan support, we can be doing it bigger than ever. We can go to the Xcel, we can go to the Target Center. We need the fans to show up. That's what it comes down to.

On Friday's card:

J. Litzau: Just come on out and your going to see me, Matt, and Al bring the house down. We're together, better than ever. I just want Minnesota to get behind us. This is the real deal. Me, Matt, and Al are the real deal.