Minnesota boxing people would get together in the morning and drink coffee at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant. They would tell stories about the glory days and talk about the need for a hall of fame.
Jake Wegner, enough of a student of Minnesota boxing to be called a historian, decided to do something about it. He assembled a board of directors and did the necessary paperwork in 2009, and the first induction dinner was held in 2010.
The fifth such ceremony will be held on Oct. 3 at Mystic Lake, and from the identities of the half-dozen honorees, the selection committee is not close to running out of worthy recipients.
The inductees for this year are fighters Jack Gibbons, Bobby Rodriguez, King Tut (Jack Tuttle) and Al Andrews, longtime state commissioner Jim O'Hara and manager/trainer Jim Morgan.
Gibbons' father, Mike, and uncle Tommy were original inductees in 2010. Rodriguez's brother Rafael was in that inaugural group, and there could be more family members to follow.
The combat sports tend to be family affairs. Example A of that is the clan of Jim and Olive Morgan: a dozen kids, six boys, three boxers (Glenn, Mike and Danny) and three wrestlers (Olympians John, Gordy and Marty).
Jim and Olive's brother, Red Bastien, barnstormed as pro wrestlers in the 1940s and 1950s. Years back, I wrote a column on oldest brother Glenn, who was managing a redneck bar in a tough part of Tampa.
Glenn was filled with admiration when he told me this story about his father and his uncle:
