DIANE LEE FISCHER
My Experience, My Passion
There have been thousands of beautiful moments and memories in New Jersey’s rich boxing history…beautiful fighters…beautiful fights…beautiful combinations…beautiful cornerwork…, but there is only one beautiful red-headed promoter and that is New Jersey’s own Diane Lee Fischer-Cristiano. Just meet Dee Lee once, speak to her once, and you’ll never forget her. Her passion for life is just as contagious as her passion for boxing. Her smile lights up a room and her enthusiasm and energy on fight night seems to spread right into the ring. She seems to be everywhere at once! How she manages to roam from the dressing room to ringside in those flashing high heels defies science and somehow makes “the sweet science” that much sweeter. Diane has beauty and brains but most of all she has steel and determination.
No one, not even Dee Lee, can promote over 60 professional boxing cards with only a pretty dress and a charming smile. Boxing eats promoters up and spits them out like a bad clam. The fact is, promoters exist on boxing’s version of a deserted island but, unlike boxers, there is no fraternity of ex-boxing promoters to turn to for help. There’s no corner person there to pick a promoter up when the main event falls out and no one to call if a fighter misses the flight and is stranded in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There’s no handbook to consult when a fighter shows up five pounds over the contract weight or a manager tries to hold you up for more money.
Promoters live in a no-man’s land and the only school that teaches those lessons is “The school of hard knocks”.
For every promoter that makes it, there are probably another thousand or more that take a beating and quit. Like every other promoter in the business, Dee Lee has had her share of beatings, in and out of boxing, but she never quit. Dee Lee never quit because she does have that steel.
Dee Lee’s determination and strength are both a product of her blue collar hometown, Vineland, NJ, (where those characteristics are almost common place) and her father and boxing mentor Jack Trevethan. It was her father that got her hooked on boxing and her father who taught her the most important lesson of her life “A person can do whatever she wants to do.” In honor of her father and that inspiration, her trademark banner “My Daddy’s Dream” appears at every Dee Lee Promotions fight card.
As founder and President of Dee Lee Promotions, Diane has been involved in every aspect of the boxing business. She’s overseen everything from contract negotiations to bout sheets and, for about a year, she even carried an extra supply of spit buckets to every event. Like most promoters she’s spent more time in gyms than some gym rats and she’s on a first name basis with just about everyone connected with boxing up and down the East Coast. For a young impressionable girl that started out as a fight fan watching Archie Moore on The Gillette Friday Night Fights with her father, she’s come an awful long way. In fact, she’s come so far, that shortly before The Old Mongoose’s passing, Dee Lee spent the better part of a week in the company of her childhood hero when he accompanied his daughter to a Dee Lee fight card.
Diane’s boxing accomplishment ‘firsts’ are well documented; in 1998 she promoted the first fight card in New Jersey to feature 6 World Title bouts on one card. She was the first and only woman ever to be chosen New Jersey Promoter of the year by the Atlantic City Press. The first woman ever to promote an all woman fight card in the state of Louisiana. The first woman to ever promote a world title fight in the country of Panama…and the first promoter to ever promote a title fight in the state of Delaware.
During Dee Lee’s promotional career she has had the sincere privilege of presenting New Jersey boxing fans with the pleasure of seeing some of the world’s most talented fighters. Wladimir Klitschko, Ray Mercer, Tracy Patterson, Kathy Collins, Michael Stewart, John Brown, Will Taylor, Koba Gogladze, Bonnie Cannino, Anthony Thompson, and Shamone Alvarez have all appeared on Dee Lee fight cards and she has shared in their joy and agony just like any true boxing fan.
Life is never boring for Diane Lee Fischer-Cristiano. The beautiful red headed dynamo people see on fight night is the same person that gets up every morning and lives life to the fullest everyday. That love of life and her pure undying love of boxing are just two of the very special gifts Dee Lee brings to New Jersey boxing.
