Olympic Gold Medalist Claressa Shields Talks About ‘T-Rex,’ The Olympics And The Misconception Of Female Boxers [Exclusive Video]

Claressa Shields On Winning Olympic Gold Medal… by uSports

Olympic boxer Claressa Shields attended SXSW promoting her new biographical documentary T-Rex, which traces her journey to the 2012 London Olympics where she defeated Russian boxer Nadezda Torlopova for the middleweight gold medal despite only being 17 years old.

In uSports’ exclusive interview, Claressa Shields spoke about her father’s influence, her family, the olympics and the misconception of female boxers. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Shields is how her father’s passion for the sport created her love for boxing.

“He wasn’t around much,” Shields said her father. “But he always be kind of like stressed out and he would talk to me when I was in the backseat of his burgundy van. One day he said, ‘if I would’ve stuck to something I was passionate about, I would’ve been successful.’ So I asked, ‘what was that?’ And he said ‘boxing.’ If he would have said track [or] basketball, I would have tried to pursue those things… I decided to box so my dad could live his life through me.”

And she used this determination to train and did not let any boxer, male or female, stand in her way. In fact, her coach, Jason Crutchfield, believed in her so much, he put her in the ring with men for sparring sessions. “And I got [in the ring] with a guy, who has been boxing for at least — he’s been boxing for a long time, since maybe six years old… And I got in there with him, and he had been taunting me for a while. And we got in there and I pieced him up.”

Stay tuned for part two of our sit-down with the formidable Claressa Shields.