South Florida trainer Derik Santos has found himself in the middle of a controversy he neither created nor wants. He was accused last week of committing what amounts to a serious crime six years ago, and if his accuser is believed, it could spell the end his career in boxing. While the accusations are illogical, Santos cannot ignore them because they are coming from a world champion with a large social media platform. This is Santos' story:
Last week, a five-second clip surfaced on social media that appears to show Claressa Shields, the reigning world female middleweight champion and self-proclaimed GWOAT (greatest woman of all time), getting knocked down in sparring by a then-amateur lightweight named Arturs Ahmetovs.
It was soon confirmed that Santos did not post the video - he said he saw it years ago but lost access to it a while ago when he lost his mobile phone. Certainly Santos did not bring the incident to public light, and it appears the video was posted by Ahmetovs himself, who is no longer an active boxer. While the boxers’ headgear prevents positive identification of either one, Shields has acknowledged that she is indeed the one who got knocked flat on her back. The boxer who did that to her, is by all accounts, a little-known Latvian-born135 pounder who compiled a 6-1 pro record between 2019 and 2020. The actual date the sparring session took place seems to be October 29, 2018, although Shields' comments tend to place the sparring session earlier that year. Either way, Ahmetovs was still an amateur who would not turn pro until 2019. The only recognizable name on Ahmetov's seven-fight pro record is Rollie Romero, who stopped Ahmetov in two rounds and would go on to win the WBA 140-pound championship.
Although there is no shame in a woman getting knocked down by a man, there is an unwritten rule in boxing that what happens in sparring is not for public disclosure. The revelation of an unknown man knocking down an Olympic and mutli-weight class champion is a blow to Shields' brash public persona. She has said she could beat former middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin, and more recently, with the challenges in the women's game dwindling for her, she has spoken of fighting former welterweight champion Keith Thurman in the near future.
Despite Ahmetov's role in posting the clip, Shields has inexplicably chosen to go after not Ahmetovs himself, but rather Ahmetovs' former trainer, Derik Santos, who suddenly is having his name dragged through the mud by Shields.
For context, it is important to note that Santos did not divulge what he saw in 2018. In fact, Shields herself appears to have publicly
disclosed the incident for the first time on September 29, 2023, at the weigh-in prior to Saul "Canelo" Alvarez's win over Jermell Charlo. Shields gave an interview saying, "I been dropped in sparring once by a guy... I got caught, but the guy I sparred, he was like a little Russian hater. He took the padding out of his gloves. I had whooped his ass on a Monday and his coach wanted to spar again on a Thursday. But he caught me when he didn't have no padding in his gloves. He know exactly who he is... This happened to me in 2018 right before I fought against Hannah Gabriels."
To be clear, there is absolutely no objective proof that Ahmetovs' gloves had been tampered with.
But as the knockdown clip went viral on social media last week, Shields
shifted her focus towards Santos, calling him out by name and accusing him of removing the stuffing from Ahmetovs' gloves prior to the knockdown. Shields said, "Why you went and put them gloves in the bag, tried to hide the bag, try to hide them gloves? Answer me that Derik Santos? Talking about, 'these gloves were gifted by Roberto Duran to me and I didn’t know that.' The gloves and the padding had zero to no padding in it. Period! Do you think I got a problem with getting dropped? It’s boxing. It happens. I done been hit so hard I done seen stars. I got hit like where I couldn’t eat for three days after sparring against some heavyweight coming up when I was 17 years old. I don’t care about being dropped, but I will what I will say is when you try to cheat me you got me effed up and yes I ran to my car and I grabbed my knife and I was going to cut Derik Santos. Guess who stopped me? Coach John [David Jackson] because I will slice his old ass up. Don’t ever cheat against me. I’m just grateful that in my career, that happened to me even though it was wrong and he cheated and he took the padding out his gloves because he was mad about it..."
Santos, a veteran and respected trainer in South Florida, certainly had no motive to tamper with a boxers' gloves for a sparring session.
When contacted by Boxingtalk, Santos was calm but angered by the viral accusations. Falsely accusing a person of cheating would be defamation but even in the heat of the first day of being accused, Santos made no threats, and said only that he is considering his legal options. He said "this situation is a mess. I am seeing stories about this from all over the world and Shields lied. I'm emotionally stressed because she is trying to ruin my career. She is falsely accusing me of a very serious offense, and it is disgusting. She is trying to torch my career and she thinks its OK. I didn't sign up for this. You also have to understand that for the past 10+ years, I also work with young athletes whose parents have put their trust in my hands. Imagine what a parent would say if I was involved in such a horrific act? The stigma that would be attached to me amateur or professional would follow me for the rest of my life. So you need to understand I must do everything to clear my name."
None of Shields' accusations make any sense. Assuming a trainer is so unethical that he or she would remove the padding from a pair of boxing gloves-- an extremely dangerous practice that could end a boxer's career and send the offending trainer to jail, like Panama Lewis in the 1980s, there is absolutely nothing that the trainer would gain from such a practice.
As for the heart of Shields' claim, Santos was very clear that he saw nothing out of the ordinary with the gloves and he strongly believes the gloves were not tampered with in any way. "I don't even take gloves to sparring to tell a fighter use these gloves. They bring the gloves, they have their own equipment."
Santos remembers the incident like this: "I had worked with John David Jackson, a former world champion, and currently Claressa’s trainer, who I consider a mentor. Around the time of this incident, I was approached by boxing manager Elvis Crespo, who told me that John was looking for some sparring for Claressa and did I know of someone because there weren’t any women available... so I suggested Arturs, who was fighting at lightweight in the amateurs."
Santos continued, "during the sparring, Claressa was talking a lot of nonsense and even wrestled and tripped Arturs prior to him knocking her down. At one point I recall Arturs asking me what’s going on? I told him try not to hurt her, but I also told him to not be her punching bag and to hit her back. As the round started, I recall her trying to land a right hand and she left herself open for the left hook counter and got knocked down."
Santos recalls there were two sparring sessions. The first one was not that memorable he says. "I think they did good work, and that's why they wanted us to come back a second time." The trainer said his recollection of the second session has been refreshed by seeing a video of the full round. He said, "In the second session, from the beginning, they started throwing high volume and Arturs started hitting her a lot. She started talking all kinds of stuff. It started getting rougher as they went along. At one point, they got all wrapped up and he falls and his guard came off. So he came over to the corner and said, 'coach, what the hell is going on here?' And I said, she's a world champion, just stay and work. And they go back out and they are going at each other with high velocity shots. She throws a right cross and he slips, and she's got her chin out, wide open and he comes back with a left hook and he hit her dead on the chin and she just drops. I pointed at him to help her get up, and she told him to get away from her. She got up and continued the round after twenty or thirty seconds of walking around but then she continued. And then the bell rings and they tapped gloves, they touched gloves like good round or whatever... Then when the sparring ended, we're all over there, and she's pissed off... then she makes a mention about the gloves. The gloves were sitting on the other corner of the ring. John went and got the gloves and he saw the tag said sixteen ounces... in the full video you can see the gloves up close, and there is nothing wrong with them."
Santos was asked if there was any question at all about the gloves after Jackson inspected them on behalf of Shields. Santos' response: "Absolutely not. In fact, tampering of gloves would not be something any trainer would ignore because of how serious that is."
Santos' opinion is that Shields has motivation to fabricate a story because, "I think she was embarrassed getting put down by a 130-pound amateur. This talk of her wanting to fight triple G [Golovkin] or Keith Thurman is a joke and takes away any interest of her fighting a professional male fighter. I mean I think it’s been 5-6 years since she has stopped any female fighter? Can you imagine what a professional men’s boxer would do to her?"
Although there were some witnesses to that 2018 sparring session, including Harold Calderon, a welterweight with a 27-1 record, Santos and everyone else involved kept the matter on the down-low, which in itself is an act consistent with his innocence. Santos said, "As a matter of fact, he [Calderon] sparred with Arturs just before Claressa and Arturs sparred and there was no mention of tampered gloves [from Calderon]. Fighters get knocked down in sparring all the time, but there is an unwritten rule in boxing, what happens in the gym stays in the gym, and I follow that code of ethics. I can’t imagine any coach, myself included, who knowingly catches a sparring partner spar his or her fighter with tampered gloves telling me, it’s ok bro, the dude has feather fists so it’s no biggie, we’re straight, can we do it again tomorrow?"
Santos points out, and Boxingtalk agrees that a tampered-glove story would not have been suppressed beyond Shields' first fight after the incident. "As opinionated as she is on social media, with so much negativity, what are the chances if this really happened that she or any of the people who were present in the gym would have waited five years to mention such a horrible act? A knockdown in sparring is one thing, a coach tampering with gloves, is not something that would be kept a secret for a New York minute."
As for other aspects of Shields' accusations, Boxingtalk finds them to be bizarre and Santos said they are also false. First the bizarre claim that the gloves in question came from Roberto Duran: Santos said he only met the great Duran once as a child and was never given any gloves from Duran as a gift. "My father took me to a party once and Roberto Duran was there, that was the only time I ever met him in my life."
Second, Santos said while he was at the sparring session, Shields did not leave the gym floor to go back to her car for a knife. "It didn't happen while I was there," he said. Third, Shields made some remarks last week on social media that Santos' poor health was "karma" for cheating. Santos is in fact not in poor health.
In closing, Santos added, "Last thing I want to say is that I think Claressa should think about joining a certain political party where lying and fabricating things with no proof is the norm and where destroying peoples lives is on the menu as the special of the day.
