By Johnny B’

The 2017 Illinois Boxing Hall of Fame awards dinner took place Saturday night at the Abbington in Glen Ellyn located outside of Chicago. Inductees included Dr. Glenn Bynum, Ernie Brown, Pat Coleman, Mauro DiFiore (unable to attend), Kenny Gould, Fernando Hernandez, George Hernandez, Mike Jankovich, William Lerch aka Bill Lerch, Rocky Martinez, Sam Merza and Anwar Oshana.

Posthumous inductees included Ben Bentley, Johnny Bratton, Nate Bolden, Dick Guerrero aka Richie Guerrero, Jack Johnson and Herbert Muhammad.

The event M/Cs were Pete Hoffman and Mike McNamara.

The inductees were selected by a group of current Illinois Boxing HOF members including John W. Daddono, who is also a major sponsor of the event, and former boxer & referee Pete Podgorski, who closed the show thanking Hoffman and McNamara for their hard work and congratulating all the new HOF members.