Before he even stepped in the ring to receive his beating from Shane Mosley, Antonio Margarito already suffered the biggest defeat of his career that night.

Prior to the bout, HBO’s Jim Lampley announced to boxing fans that Antonio Margarito was found to have a hard, plaster like substance in his hand wraps, and was forced to re-wrap them three times. The material was taken by Mosley’s camp upon the arrival of Mosley’s lawyer, boxed up and removed as evidence to be further tested.

Nazim Richardson, Mosley’s trainer for this fight, said that this was no accident.

“It was deliberate, but on whose part? I don’t know. For all I know the corner could have been wrapping it that way for all of his fights, and Margarito could have been just as surprised as anybody that it was wrong.”

Two samples were removed from Margarito’s wraps and sent to Sacramento where the California State Athletic Commission will test them.

Margarito’s trainer, Francisco Espinoza, denied any wrongdoing on the part of the Margarito camp:

“We did not do anything illegal. What happened was that Capetillo prepared the gauzes that are used, two weeks before [the fight] and had them in a lump with cloth that apparently was humid and therefore hardened. There was no substance like that there [the plaster]. The commission asked us to bandage his hands again and we did.”

I’m no scientist, but that sounds pretty much physically impossible to me. Gauze is not boxing specific. In my personal history, wet gauze is wet gauze. It doesn’t turn hard. And if it did, why would you use that gauze on fight night.

According to Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole:

Dean Lohuis, the co-interim executive director of the California State Athletic Commission, said the piece was apparently slipped in underneath the legal tape that was already placed on Margarito’s hands by trainer Javier Capetillo.

In almost no scenario that I can think of does this end well for Margarito. No matter what the substance was, it wasn’t part of his legal hand wraps. One way or another, there was an illegal foreign object (to steal an old wrestling term) in Margarito’s hand wraps. The accusation alone could haunt him for the rest of his career.

To date, Margarito’s biggest win of his career came against Miguel Cotto, where he viciously beat and bloodied a man who had never been stopped before. Even though he got caught with the material in his tape before the Mosley fight, Margarito’s hand wraps will forever be remembered alongside a picture of a bloody Miguel Cotto.

If Margarito is found to have been sporting an illegal material in his hand wraps, and that material is deemed to be something that would harden into a plaster-like material when wet, then Margarito should never fight again. There’s a good chance that after the two wars he was just in, and the gameplan laid out by Mosley that he’ll never be the same again, but this, if true, is unforgivable. He’ll be lucky to escape this without prosecution if it is indeed true.

Not only Margarito, but anyone who was a party to, or witness of the alleged wrap-padding should be punished heavily. The person who actually put the material into Margarito’s glove after it had been legally wrapped should never again be allowed near a boxing match. That is about a half of a step away from actually trying to kill someone.

The New York Post went on to say that a doctor who was with the Mosley camp felt the material and said that it was what they use in the hospitals to make casts with. That’s scary.

Also from the New York Post:

Both samples were given to Mosley’s lawyer Judd Burstein, who said they felt like “plaster of Paris.” He then gave them to Lohuis with the assurance they would be secured it such a way they wouldn’t be tampered with. “It looked to me like the kind of thing that if the fight went on when (Margarito’s) hands got sweaty and it would harden so it would feel like a cast,” Burstein said.

Richardson said the blocks of hardened gauze had been packed and treated in such as way that it could make Margarito’s punches feel like bricks especially in later rounds. “As you fight the natural cushion in the gloves wear down,” Richardson said, “so by the later rounds you’re basically getting hit with that plaster in there. That kind of stuff is ridiculous.”

This is, or at least could turn out to be, an ugly situation. Margarito’s entire career will come into question, and every one of his win’s will be discredited by most people.

If this is all true, penalties should border on extreme. Boxing doesn’t need this publicity and Shane Mosley didn’t need to risk his life.

This is the kind of thing that, if confirmed, will for all intents and purposes, end a career. It’s only fair, considering it very well could have ended Mosley’s.

UPDATE: Margarito, trainer have licenses revoked.