By Ryan Songalia

Rashad Holloway is one of the many people interested in the findings that the California State Athletic Commission intend to uncover on February 10 pertaining to a "plaster-like substance" that forced trainer Javier Capetillo to re-wrap Antonio Margarito's hands shortly before his January 24 knockout loss to Shane Mosley.

Holloway's career was put in jeopardy during a December 19 sparring session with Margarito in Montebello, California. Both were preparing for fights; Holloway's was the following week while Margarito was gearing up to tango with Sugar Shane a month later. What started out as his final day of sparring nearly became his last day of boxing.

"To be honest, it happened so quick that I don't even know what happened," Holloway, 9-1 (5 KO), tells BoxingScene.com. "I remember he threw a wild right hand and I slipped it and he switched over to a southpaw stance and threw a left uppercut. And it landed.

"When it first happened, I didn't know what hit me. I've been hit 50 million times in my career, but I'd never been hit with a shot that hurt like that. It felt like a hard object hit me in the face. I thought he hit me with the palm of his hand. It wasn't like a normal punch. It didn't feel like a padded glove hit me. It was like a solid, hard impact.

"It felt like I had been hit with a bag of rocks."

Holloway suddenly called a halt to the session. The right side of his face went numb, his vision became impaired, he feared the worst. Hoping it was just a minor issue, Holloway waited two days before visiting the hospital. When he finally went to the emergency room, they confirmed that he had fractured the orbital bone on the right side of his face.

It wasn't until Holloway visited a specialist that he realized how serious the situation was.

"They told me that there was a possibility that I wouldn't be able to fight again. They said there was a possibility that it could heal wrong and that they'd have to re-break my face and put a metal plate in my face."

Luckily for Holloway, the injury would not be the end of the line. Holloway already has an eight-round fight scheduled for March 28 on a card in his hometown of Cincinnati that will feature former Olympians Ricardo Williams Jr. and Rau'shee Warren.

He says the bone is at "90-95%" strength and that the muscle is healed "as much as it's going to heal." He claims to still experience occasional numbness in his face but has already returned to sparring.

Last week Freddie Roach, who runs the Wild Card Gym that Holloway trains at, was a guest on Brian Kenny's ESPN radio show to discuss the Margarito hand wrap scandal. In the interview he referred to a fighter who trains at his gym that had been injured in sparring as evidence of past wrongdoing on Margarito's behalf. He was convinced that Margarito used illegal wraps in gym sessions.

As the interview was airing live, Holloway says that his phone was ringing off the hook. Everyone knew who Roach was referring to.

"To my understanding," Holloways says, "[Capetillo] tried to justify what happened by saying 'It's nothing different than what we do every single day in training, I wrap his hands up with the same stuff.' I guess he didn't see no wrong in what he was doing.

"I wouldn't say it was malicious...I would say it was incompetence."

Holloway says his relationship with Margarito is casual, professional - not intimate enough to properly gauge his ethics. Still, Holloway says this whole controversy has caught him off-guard.

"Boxing is boxing, there are a lot of assholes in boxing. Tony always seemed to be a good guy. There is a mutual respect, whenever we see each other we speak, we embrace. I just didn't think he was the kind of guy who would do anything like that.

"Some people will do anything to get ahead. People are out there juicing everyday. As a fighter, c'mon, we know if we have something in our hands. A fighter should know if his hands feel harder than normal. If you've been a pro for that long you have to take some accountability."

Like the rest of the world, Holloway continues to await Tuesday's hearing, which will dredge up a lot of speculation regarding Margarito's past fights and call into question Capetillo's ethics. All Holloway can do is wait.

Ryan Songalia is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. You can contact him at songaliaboxing@aol.com .