It’s boxing news but still one of the biggest stories in the current combat sports landscape. We’ve covered the controversy a little bit here on BE and Scott over at BadLeftHook has done a great job as always on his site. Basically Margarito was caught with some sort of foreign substance in his hand wraps before his fight with Shane Mosley (which Mosley then won convincingly).
Things have already gotten off to a bit of an explosive start with the California State Attorney General saying that he thinks Margarito should receive the harshest penalty possible. Which would seem to indicate that they are pretty confident of Antonio’s guilt. Adding to Maragarito’s trouble is this nugget:
Inspector Che Guevara testified in three years and 150 hand wraps he had never seen such a pad.
“It was sweat-soaked, thinner and harder in certain areas, not hard as a rock, but firm and hard,” Guevara said, adding it had a stain “like old blood” on it. “It was not flexible. It was very firm.”
The stain part is especially damaging as it would prevent the possibility that they “didn’t notice” if something had somehow found its way into the wrap as there would be no excuse for overlooking something a completely different color. A harder insert was found on his right hand after the wrap was taken off.
There probably won’t be too many major developments in the story until Mid-March which is when state officials said they would know more about what the exact substance on the insert would be known.
But looking at the facts it is becoming quite clear that Margarito had to have known what was going on. Also hiring a big time lawyer for a state athletic commission hearing (very different from a criminal court trail) seems to hint to me that he knows he is guilty shows that he knows there is a shitstorm coming and is going to need to bring in some big guns.