Derik Santos, coach of Arturs Ahmetovs, who sparred with Claressa Shields during the incident where she was knocked down, recently appeared on ProBox TV to address Shields’ claims of tampering with his fighter’s gloves. With over two decades of experience in boxing, Santos sought to counter Shields’ allegations, maintaining that she is misleading the public with misrepresented facts, damaging the reputation of himself, his gym, and his fighter.
Derik Santos, founder of DS Boxing Gym, explained why Arturs Ahmetovs released the sparring video, which led to accusations of Ahmetovs having the padding of his gloves removed. Although Ahmetovs is no longer an active professional boxer, Santos reached out to him for clarification after the video’s release.
“I asked him [Arturs Ahmetovs] why he did that, and his point was, ‘Coach, I’ve been tired of hearing her talk trash over the years, and champions should be honest’, and he said, ‘the truth is on our side’. And that was his statement.
“After that, she [Claressa Shields] went on rambling on Instagram. For a while, I got involved there, very respectfully going back and forth with her until the point she said she was going to get me fired from boxing.“
Santos, who has spent the majority of his life in boxing, argued that Claressa Shields was defaming his name with her claims, asserting that she was using malicious intent to ruin his reputation and career in boxing.
In response to Shields’ allegations of him and/or Ahmetovs removing the padding from Ahmetovs’ gloves, Derik Santos refuted the undisputed women’s middleweight champion’s assertions about cheating on his part.
“I think they’re [the allegations] ridiculous and disgusting. It’s absurd, it’s criminal, it’s unbelievable. Fighters get knocked down in sparring all the time, with men and women or whatnot, and you can go through all my social media history. I’ve never posted one of those [sparring] videos; I’ve never spoken badly about any of those fighters.
“Claressa Shields, for whatever reason, keeps bringing up that incident even though nobody from our side ever brought that up, and I don’t think anyone from her side brought that up.
“Through the years, I’ve heard through a lot of other fighters and other people that she keeps bringing that up. And this is exactly what happened. In the interview she apparently gave for Canelo and Charlo, she again brought that up.“
Derik Santos asserts that the sparring incident had only been mentioned thereafter by Claressa Shields herself throughout the past five years since it occurred in 2018. He also endeavored to clear his name of any wrongdoing after alleging that Shields had lied to paint him in a worse light.
“Not only did she bring it up, it was a blatant lie of how it happened, [and] what happened. She’s claiming that I got these doctored gloves from Roberto Duran as a gift. I’ve never met Roberto Duran in my life,” Santos said.
“I wish I did because he’s a great fighter, [but] I’ve never met him before in my life. She’s claiming that she beat him up in the first sparring [session], and that’s why this [the accusations of the removal of padding on Ahmetovs’ gloves] happened.“
During her Instagram live rant, Claressa Shields did make statements where she accused Derik Santos of having been gifted gloves by Panamanian-Mexican boxing legend Roberto Duran, which he vehemently denied during his interview with ProBox TV.
“Let’s talk about you Santos,” Shields said during the Instagram live during which Derik Santos was present. “That’s why karma is eating your a** up. That is why you’re dealing with your health issues now because you are a f***** up individual.
“He was talking about some, ‘these gloves were gifted by Roberto Duran to me, and I didn’t know that the padding was that much in there’. The gloves and the padding had zero to no padding in it. That’s what it’s about. You think I got a problem with being dropped? This is boxing!“
Derik Santos went on to clarify that Arturs Ahmetovs sparred with Shields using ‘Green Hill’-branded safety/amateur boxing gloves―known for having more padding to protect both the user and their opponent―during their first session but switched to normal sparring gloves in the second sparring session in which Claressa Shields was knocked down.
He also explained how safety boxing gloves are rarely used in sparring to illustrate how much Ahmetovs was holding back to help and accommodate Shields, who was preparing for her world title match against Hanna Gabriels on June 22nd in 2018.
During the second session, Ahmetovs wore 16-ounce gloves, considered standard during sparring sessions. Santos admitted to this second sparring session being “more spirited” than the first, pointing out that Ahmetovs had a full video of the sparring sessions where it could be clearly witnessed that he was holding back, and there was no indication the padding was removed during those sessions.
Furthermore, the knockdown seemed to have been spurred by Ahmetovs after he endured Shields’ alleged taunting and fouling which eventually led him to no longer pull back his punches, resulting in her being dropped.
The point that Santos appears to be making is that there was no foul play on his own part or Ahmetovs, and that Shields was merely knocked down by a good shot she did not see coming. However, Shields’ apparent misconception about the situation has led to slander from his part, which forced Derik Santos to reach out publicly.
“I’ve always respected her as a fighter, as a champion that she is, and I still do, so this is not a question of trying to discredit her as a fighter or even a question of trying to embarrass somebody because they got dropped,” Santos continued to explain.
“This happens to fighters all the time. I’m only here because she is maliciously taking intent to try to defame me. And this young man [Arturs Ahmetovs], I feel like I had to stand up for him too.“
Further details were divulged by Santos as he recalled that no one else on the team seemed to believe any padding had been removed from Ahmetovs’ gloves, an assertion that Shields’ coach, John David Jackson, seemed to have made.
“After the sparring, we were all in close proximity talking, and she was frustrated because she was dropped, and she said, ‘oh, I’ve never been dropped. Let me see the gloves’,” Santos said.
“Now mind you, there are videos out there where she’s saying I hid the gloves in a bag. There are videos where she’s saying she grabbed him [Ahmetovs] by the hand and walked him over to John David [Jackson], and they saw that it was cheating, but then supposedly he sparred Harold Calderon after.“
Harold Calderon, an American welterweight, was part of John David Jackson’s stable of fighters at the time and sparred with Ahmetovs after the incident, which Santos maintains would be an odd move from Calderon’s coach to let another of his own fighters spar a boxer accused of cheating, driving home the point of Shields’ account being deceptive.
John David Jackson also did not mention any cheating on Ahmetovs’ or Santos’ part, as Derik Santos went on to explain.
“The gloves [which Shields claimed were tampered with] were ringside on the other side of the ring. I said to John [David Jackson], ‘John, go ahead and grab the gloves from the other side of the ring’. He did; he looked at them and saw they were 16-ounce [gloves],” Santos continued.
“I believe he also said [to Claressa Shields] that it wasn’t the gloves; her head [chin] was up in the air. I would never do that, much less to him [John David Jackson], who was a mentor and a person I worked with for many years and had many wonderful experiences with.“
Derik Santos’ revelation that he held a relationship with Jackson’s own coach is a particular detail that Shields did not mention during her Instagram live appearance.
Santos now appears to be gearing himself to sue Claressa Shields for defamation of his character and has revealed that he has already reached out to a legal team to represent him if he decides to take Shields’ allegations to court.
As of now, it still cannot be determined what the truth of the matter is. John David Jackson, Shields’ coach, was unavailable to reach for any comments, even though his testimony would greatly help sort out what actually occurred.
According to Santos, Jackson himself asserted that there was no foul play, tying down to the alleged lies that Shields has unveiled on Ahmetovs and his coach after the knockdown incident became public.
