AUBURN —Boxer Steven Gamache was arrested Saturday night and charged with possessing two tablets of the painkiller hydrocodone.

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.

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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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