AUBURN —Boxer Steven Gamache was arrested Saturday night and charged with possessing two tablets of the painkiller hydrocodone.
Steven Gamache
The 29-year-old fighter, raised in Lewiston and currently living in Manhattan, was arrested by Auburn police on the misdemeanor charge at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday on Washington Street.
Gamache was arrested following a routine traffic stop, police said. The officer who made the stop found two hydrocodone pills for which Gamache did not have a prescription.
Police said Gamache told the officer a co-worker had given him the pills to treat an unspecified medical condition. Hydrocodone is the drug used in the popular painkiller Vicodin.
Gamache has a boxing record of 4-0. He's undefeated and scheduled to fight again at the start of the year, according to Joey Gamache, a two-time world champion and Steven's father.
How the arrest will affect the upcoming fight remains unknown. Gamache was booked at the Androscoggin County Jail and later released.
In professional boxing circles, Gamache is considered a rising star. He returned to the ring in 2010 after a six-year hiatus during which he graduated with a degree in business management from Berkley College.
Gamache was hoping to make his boxing debut in Lewiston in 2010 but those plans were derailed by a 2007 law that made prize fighting illegal in Maine.
His most recent bout was in late October when he defeated Jose Angel Ortiz by unanimous decision.
Gamache has a minor criminal history that includes charges of disorderly conduct, leaving the scene of a crash and refusing to submit to arrest.
According to the New York State Athletic Commission, Gamache holds an active boxing license in New York. Hydrocodone is not listed as a banned substance in the commission's illicit substances policy.
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