Margaritos wraps

You need it in spanish? The hearing was in english and his statements were translated through an interpreter. I haven't been able to locate the full testimony of Capetillo, in english or spanish, from the hearing in Feb 2009.

There are various news sources that summarized key statements from his testimony.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/feb/11/antonio-margarito-boxing-gloves-ban

https://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3897765

https://www.sbsun.com/2009/02/11/margarito-capetillo-receive-1-year-bans-for-illegal-wraps/amp/

Here's the official transcript of the reinstatement hearing on Aug 8th, 2010. It gives an overview of the original hearing from Feb 2009.

https://www.dca.ca.gov/csac/meetings/agendas/20100818.pdf

Under "FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY", it summaries the history of the case -

Microscoped photo of Antonio Margarito's handwraps confiscated before the Shane Mosley fight.

https://www.badlefthook.com/2010/8/20/1633900/microscoped-photo-of-antonio

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cY-...vox-cdn.com/fan_shot_images/139264/1i271h.jpg

https://www.15rounds.com/margarito-capetillo-and-the-not-so-long-arm-of-the-law-090210/

https://www.15rounds.com/wp-content...knuckle_padgauze_6x_magnification-300x223.png

 

I don't need an american point of view

 

Excellent

 

Failureyet you still continual

 

Ringtv did an interview with Capetillo. Translated to english of course.

https://www.ringtv.com/124655-capetillo-breaks-silence-apologizes-for-hand-wrap-scandal/

Capetillo acknowledges that he was worried in the days leading into the fight, that he knew Tony was in "deep ****", reveals that Tony had back problems, and even acknowledges his makeshift plaster pad inserts but denies it was a premeditated act :

 

Me at men as re ideots

 

I get that you weren't convinced from just reports from american news agencies as to what Capetillo testified to. But I provided you with a ringtv interview with Capetillo himself admitting to wrongdoing and apologizing. In this interview, Capetillo gives his story of things, contends nothing he did was pre-meditated or intentional, but he makes it very clear that he made a big mistake and deserved to be punished. He even said he "thanks God every day that Margarito did not fight with the gauze inserts".

So with that, I don't see how you can deny proof of the inserts, it's coming straight from the horse's mouth. He acknowledges that he uses plaster inserts in the pads to protect his fighters hands in training and he had those in his bag which he clearly put into Margarito's handwraps.

In this article, the late great Emanuel Steward is quoted and finds Capetillo's "innocent mistake" story less than crediible.

https://www.15rounds.com/margarito-capetillo-and-the-not-so-long-arm-of-the-law-090210/

And finally, the pad was examined by the California DOJ Lab in Sacramento under 6x magnification. Here is the photograph showing clear evidence of a flaky white substance:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cY-...vox-cdn.com/fan_shot_images/139264/1i271h.jpg

 

Damn @shadow111 bringing the receipts

 

He posted primary sources, which answered my initial criticism.

Though I am still curious about the lab results. Especially in relation to what the white substance was.

 

Shadow111
I don't see anything there where he admits/acknowledges to using plaster inserts in training.

Also saying he thanks God that Tony didn't fight with those pads, can just as easily mean that he saw how they threw the book at him, and he is happy they were unable to do the same to Margarito. i.e. imagine how it would have ruined not only his career but Margarito's too if he had indeed fought on with the illegal pads.

 

He didn't use the word plaster in the interview, but he acknowledges that he pulled out the training pads from his bag and that he was under pressure from being worried about Tony's condition and said this pressure may have caused him to "accidently" as he claims pull out the training pads instead of legal pads and put them into Tony's hand wraps.

The LA Times article states that at the hearing, he testified to using plaster inserts in training to protect his fighter's hands -

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-13-sp-cotto-margarito13-story.html

At the California commission hearing, Capetillo testified his fighters use plaster inserts in training to protect their hands and inserts must have accidentally been tossed into his training bag, and wound up in Margarito’s gloves without the fighter’s knowledge.

So this had already been established prior to this interview, since it was revealed at the hearing. Do we really need to hear Capetillo use the word plaster in the interview if he already testified to it at the hearing, if he acknowledges that the training pads were in his gym bag and that he put them into Tony's handwraps? The findings by the commission make it clear that the training pads were illegal and had plaster-like inserts in them, and the gauze itself when put under a microscope revealed a white plaster-like substance on them.

After saying that he thanks God that Margarito didn't fight with the inserts, he talks about how he's known Shane Mosley since he was a little kid and never would want to hurt him, or for one of his fighters to seriously hurt any fighter, which suggests that Mosley would have been hurt had he not been caught.

So he's not referring to being in more trouble when he talked about thanking God that Margarito didn't fight with those pads, he's thanking God that they caught him so Mosley didn't get hurt since he specifically brings up Mosley, how he's known him since he was a kid and wouldn't want him to be hurt.

 

the commission inspectors who testified at the hearings said the pad looked like it had some kind of liquid on it, which was a foreign substance and against the rules. also, they said it looked old, like it had been used before. they did not say it looked or felt like plaster. these are the official inspectors. you got quotes from lance pugmire, who is basically ellie seckbach without the camera. the chemical analysis did not turn up anything found exclusively in plaster, that is not found in sweat.
idc what you believe, i got no love for margarito, you can hate on him all you want. im just telling you what is, without the fanboy feelings.

 

1. I guess neither of us would really know without asking Capetillo directly to clarify his statement.

2. I guess another problem is I cannot find the original transcript.
When I do an advanced search there are only 3 instances of this supposed admission. One is in L.A. times, which as I point out before is not using a direct quote (which seems alarming in itself given the weight of such an admission), but also used some obvious hyperbole in the article relating to the hand-wraps being caked in plaster. The only transcript I can find is from this very forum. And there is no link to the source, so it appears highly likely to be a fantasy troll post. The 3rd instance is another boxing forum.
So I can't just take the L.A. times word for it. Without proof, it's highly likely that was an artistic flourish by the author trying to spice up the article.

3. The other problem I have with a lot of this is what is written in the CSAC agenda (2010, p. 27-28):

EXAMINATION The submitted gauze pad was examined using a stereomicroscope. A white solid material was seen adhering to and between the gauze fibers.

Calcium and sulfur were detected in samples of the white solid using an X-ray fluorescence [XRF] spectrometer. The elements calcium, sulfur and oxygen are found in plaster of Paris [calcium sulfate - CaS04]. These three elements are also found in substances other than plaster. Oxygen is not detectable by XRF.​

California State Athletic Commission - Meeting Agenda 8/18/10

Perhaps there are some scientists on this forum with the relevant background to put me right, but from my layperson's understanding it seems very odd that would not send this to a lab that would be able to test for Sulphates or at least with the capabilities to detect Oxygen using XRF.

There needs to be CaSO4 present for it to be/become plaster of paris.

You would think they would require a little more information than just that the elements Calcium and Sulphur exist in the sample.



IMHO, A lot of the quotes we see point to old wraps being used - illegal in itself, but the idea that there was plaster of paris involved feels like reaching by the newspapers, and a lot of the quotations from the inspectors come off as them trying to cover their ass and get on board with the media narrative.

I admit the microscope photos look suspicious, but at the same time even if that was a microscopic paste of CaSO4, would such a small quantity be able to set into bricks/a hard cast across the knuckles - that seems somewhat unbelievable given the process of putting a cast on.

This content is protected

It's also suspicious that the wraps disappeared before undergoing further testing (if other posters are to be believed)

 

CSAC inspector Che Guevara testified at the hearing that the pad inside Margarito’s hand wraps was “not hard as a rock, but firm and hard.”

Inspector Mike Bray testified there was “a white substance smeared across the pad, like a cast plaster.”

"There was a blood stain on the corner of the pad. It was moist and dirty looking with a white substance smeared across the pad, like a cast plaster ... I can see a substance smeared in the middle of this pad," Bray said, reading from notes he'd filed about the inspection.

So Official Inspector Mike Bray did in fact testify to the pad looking like plaster, and Guevara testified to it being firm and hard.

The quote from Inspector Mike Bray about there being a white substance smeared across the pad like a cast plaster was not just reported by Lance Pugmire, but also from other sports news outlets, like ESPN and Dan Rafael in this article, see here :

https://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3897765

Another inspector, Mike Bray, said during questioning that he had seen the pads and that they were "moist and dirty looking with a white substance smeared across the pad, like a cast plaster."

I don't think anyone would confuse Dan Rafael of being like Elie Seckbach without the camera. If Dan reported that official inspector Mike Bray indeed described the pads as like a cast plaster in his testimony, I think we can bank on it being a legit quote from an official inspector.

The analysis that the ingredients found in the wrap make plaster of paris but are also found in human sweat is the counter-argument. But I find it hard to believe that the expert who made his conclusions wouldn't have realized that these two ingredients were also found in sweat. Then you have the photograph of the wrap itself at 6x :

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cY-...vox-cdn.com/fan_shot_images/139264/1i271h.jpg

The only way to tell if that's a normal looking gauze after a fighter takes off his handwraps is to examine another fighter's handwrap after he fights and see if it looks like that under a microscope, but I find it hard to believe that sweat alone would make gauze look like that under a 6x microscope. There does appear to be a thick white substance in between the interstices of the gauze itself. What do you make of that photo and does that look suspicious to you?

This combined with testimony of the inspectors, the admission of wrongdoing by Capetillo, the claims by Richardson, the report from the reinstatement hearing. It seems pretty overwhelming that the wraps were loaded, but if you still have your doubts that Capetillo didn't load Tony's wraps with hardened inserts make your counter-arguments and we can discuss it further.

I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what happened, without the fanboy feelings. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence that Capetillo used hardened, prevously-used training pads with inserts that protected his fighters hands in training instead of legal fresh soft new pads. I find the idea that it was all some kind of an agenda by the CSAC or that the objections by Richardson were without merit to be only coming from a select few Margarito fanboys who still defend him.

Whether or not Margarito knew about it and was just playing dumb to avoid being punished is another part of this, but at its core I don't know how you can deny how suspicious this all looks for Margarito and his team. And I think from Capetillo's perspective, it seems plausible that he took full responsibility to try to protect Margarito's reputation, which may well have been a ploy by itself. The commission did not buy this argument, they felt that Capetillo was protecting Margarito and had reason to believe that Margarito knew more than he let on.

Did you read the ringtv interview with Capetillo? What do you make of it? It seems pretty clear that Capetillo himself violated the rules by loading Tony's wraps with hardened training pads and was caught red-handed. He expressed remorse and said he deserved to be punished. Frankly it's hard to believe that he made this mistake innocently as he claims.

Here is an interesting article which has a lot of interesting information in it that isn't in mainstream sources. A lot of notes and details about the hearing and what was said is hard to find these days, so it really takes a lot of digging to find details abotu what was said in the hearing or quotes from fighters or those involved that may have since been deleted from the internet :

http://thecomeback.com/queensberryr...of_their_licenses_in_dark_day_for_boxing.html

As it pertains to Margarito's culpability himself, near the end it highlights a possibly big contradiction from something Margarito apparently testified to at the hearing :

If Margarito testified that he never saw these training pads before with the harder inserts, then that suggests he's lying considering he had been with Capetillo and trained with him for 11 years. This may have been one of the reasons why both Capetillo and Margarito were suspended, and why the commission didn't buy Antonio's story. If Capetillo had been using these hardened pads for training purposes, Margarito his pupil of 11 years would surely have used them and would have known about them and how different they were to the normal fresh soft pads that he would have used in fights if he wasn't using the hardened training pads in fights. So either Tony was lying and playing dumb saying that he never seen those kind of hardened training pads before OR he didn't know the difference because he had been using the training pads in all of his fights. Either way, he either wasn't being truthful about his knowledge of these harder training pads that Capetillo used for training or these harder pads have been used in all of his fights and no one ever caught him, either way this revelation must have convinced the commission that he deserved to be suspended and punished as well as his trainer.

 

It is frustrating that we can't seem to find the full official transcript from the original hearing in Febraury 2009. It's just not listed on the CSAC website, only a brief minutes summary, as I tried to find it. And this leads me to wonder if the full transcript of that hearing was ever on their website or was ever provided to the media. Perhaps that only snippets of the testimony were ever released.

The fact that we have to dig so hard to find obstrure fan websites from 2009 to find quotes from the original hearing or from those involved is a little odd, but that could just be a product of the internet and this being 12 years later and websites getting deleted over time. If the full testimony wasn't ever released, then how did all these obscure fan websites come to be citing quotes and informaton from them that apparently isn't available anywhere else?

The other problem could be due to the language barrier. Margarito and Capetillo would have testified en español with an interpreter, so I wouldn't expect any transcript to be en español. Also how common is it for transcripts of testimony in court hearings to be released in full? I'm not sure the court or the CSAC required to release any of the full statements of the questioning, I'm guessing that probably these quotes about what was said in the testimony were written down by journalists who were there. And since most if not all the journalists were english speakers, there may have been some details (like the word "plaster" perhaps in Capetillo's testimony) that may have been lost in translation especially if they were relying on the interpreter.

So I'm not askng you to take the LA Times word for it as it relates to whether or not Capetillo specifically said the word "plaster" when describing the inserts in the training pads when he testified. But as it relates to inspector Mike Bray's description of a plaster like substance in his testimony, as I said in the previous post, that's not just been reported by the LA Times but also by other outlets like ESPN. So you shouldn't be stuck on whether Capetillo himself said the word plaster, after all he's the guy being accused of cheating. We have no idea if he was even asked at the hearing if there was plaster in his training wraps. But we do have plenty of other indicators that he's admitted that the training pads he used and put in Margarito's wraps on fight night were harder than normal wraps and not legal, and that's really all we need to know to conclude that he cheated and loaded Margarito's wraps.

I agree that Calcium and Sulphur don't sound like the descriptors that I'd expect an expert to use to prove plaster or anything that would make the wrap hard, but this could all just be semantics. I know it's also refered to as gypsum. By themselves these individual substances may be found in sweat but combined as a compound are known to form plaster of paris, so there's a distinction there. Sweat and the warm temperature inside the glove over 12 rounds would also make the wrap harder by itself after being cooled by the air when a fighter takes off the wrap. So sweat alone doesn't make it plaster, but it does make it harder and illegal to use a used wrap.

Plaster doesn't need to be proven for the wrap to be illegal and for the wraps to be loaded, it's just makes it even worse and more damning. We have the statement from inspector Mike Bray and the statements from other inspectors and Richardson that the pad was hard. That's enough for me. And again we also have the photo of the gauze under a 6x microscope which also looks like what I'd expect it to look like if plaster or a substance was on the gauze that made it harder like a cast was mixed into the gauze. We have a mountain of indicators, statements and evidence to conclude that the wraps were loaded. Even if the substances cited are also found in human sweat, we have no idea if the levels of those substance are the same in human sweat vs the levels that were found in that gauze let alone these individual substances vs being formed as a compound.

In this case though, the media narrative was created by the inspectors. Larry Merchant was the person to break this story first during the telecast, explaining to the audience what happened in the dressing room. It wasn't like the media just randomly decided that plaster was on the wraps. Multiple inspectors made it clear that Margarito's wraps were in violation of several rules, including tape being applied directly on the hands, which is what started everything, according to Nazim at least, but more seriously the admission that Capetillo did in fact use hardened inserts for training to protect his fighters hands and accidently as he claims put onto the fight night wraps.

How else would his training pads have become so much harder than a normal wrap if there wasn't a foreign substance in the inserts? Unless they were harder and better protected the knuckles simply because they were being used over and over again and was just dried sweat built up on dried sweat, and maybe the gauze was folded over in a certain way combined with dried sweat and dried blood - but even then, still it would be harder than a normal wrap and just as illegal.

So for me, plaster doesn't need to be proven to conclude that Margarito's wraps were loaded. Whether it was harder because the pads were re-used from dried sweat, or whether they were dipped in some substance like plaster, either way the wraps were loaded and not legal.

I don't think anyone thought that the pads were as hard as a cast, only that they were harder than a normal fresh soft pad. Whether it was dried sweat and/or blood or some kind of paste similar to plaster, I don't think plaster or a paste needs to be proven here. Remember that in addition to sweat, the inspectors also revealed that blood was mixed in to the used wraps as well and dried blood does harden anything it comes in contact with. It's possible that there wasn't plaster and was just a mixture of dried sweat and blood re-used on the same pad over and over again, however inspector Mike Bray did claim he saw a plaster-like substance on it.