Selecting the right boxing gloves is crucial for protecting your hands and enhancing your training experience. With a wide variety of gloves available, it's essential to understand the differences between them to make an informed decision. This guide will walk you through the various types of boxing gloves, popular brands, and important factors to consider when making your purchase.
Understanding the Importance of Boxing Gloves
Contrary to what other fighting forms like karate or kung fu will recommend, punching will wreck your hands over time, even if you are careful. Incorrect punching form, as well as unprotected hands, will lead to arthritis, weakened joints, weakened muscles, and decreased functionality of the hands over time. To ensure that your hands will be protected and functioning well for the rest of your life, it’s important that you always protect them.
Just like you would wear headgear to protect your head, you must wear punching gloves to protect your hand. A good pair of boxing gloves will be comfortable and will fit your hand around the wrist and fingers. It shouldn’t feel like the glove is tiring out your hand or forcing it to shape in a way that feels awkward.
High-quality gloves will withstand a punch time and time again without losing their cushioning qualities. Certain materials used to make the glove will determine how long it lasts before it tears apart or flattens up. Not all punching gloves are made with the mentality of real boxing training in mind. As with anything in life, not all are made equal.
Types of Boxing Gloves
Punching gloves come in an ever-confusing variety, and it’s important to understand the distinctions between them. Here’s a breakdown of the different types of gloves available:
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Bag Gloves
There are two kinds of bag gloves. The first type is the modern version that looks like a full-sized, fully-padded glove especially made for hitting the heavy bag. It has a denser padding that gives you more hand protection and allows you to hit the bag for longer without the glove going flat.
The second type of “bag gloves” are the old school kind. They look small, and really thin, as if you’re wearing very thin mitts over your hands. They were made only to protect your skin from tearing and don’t offer much cushion or wrist support. They are designed to protect your knuckles while you deliver hard punches to the punching bag and serve to accustom your knuckles to harder impact. In my opinion, ignore them, they are a waste of time and money.
Sparring Gloves
These are thicker-cushioned gloves with soft padding to soften the blows from one fighter to another. Because this type of cushion is softer, you should only use it for sparring and not for bagwork. Hitting the heavy bag with the softer cushion will make this glove go flat quickly.
It’s important to note that sparring gloves should be at least 14-16 ounces, especially if you weigh anything over 130 pounds. Some people believe in sparring with gloves that are competition weight for your weight class.
Training Gloves
These are all-purpose gloves. They’re sold as being good enough for sparring and bagwork, but you will realize it’s hard to get a perfect glove that can do both. Some of them are not thick or soft enough for sparring. But if you wanted a cheap all-purpose glove, this will be the closest thing.
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Pro or Fight Gloves
Fight gloves are smaller and more compact to deliver more damage to your opponent.
Aerobic or Cardio Gloves
These gloves are usually made obvious by their very low pricing. Avoid them!
Features to Consider
Lace-Up vs. Hook & Loop
Lace-up gloves offer more comfort if you like your glove to fit snug around your wrist. For some fighters, it’s just a habit to have lace-up gloves.
Hook & Loop gloves are made to be convenient and can be just as supportive as the lace-up while having the convenience of being hook & loop. Most people will prefer the hook & loop gloves because they can put them on themselves without much help.
The bad parts about hook & loop in my opinion are that the elastic velcro hooks can tear into your cotton hand wraps and shred them. It’s not a big deal but it’s happened to me before and really annoyed the hell out of me. Lace-up gloves are actually not that hard to deal with.
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Another great thing about lace-up gloves is that it allows you to walk around the gym and ask people to tie your gloves.
Color
Does the color of your boxing gloves matter? YES! Although red is the classic color, it is less visible to the human eye than other colors in the spectrum. If you’re sparring against someone, it’s preferred that they wear gloves of a color that you can see. Don’t forget that wearing light colored gloves can also help your trainer catch your punches better.
I’ve trained at night a lot so I love to buy blue, green, and white colored gloves. I still have a pair of red ones just because red is the classic boxing color. Another knock on red gloves is that sometimes you can’t see the build up of blood stains on the gloves.
Complete Guide to Boxing Gloves | Boxing Gloves 101 ft. csquaredboxing
Top Boxing Glove Brands
What’s even more confusing is that the manufacturer claims that each product they offer is the best choice. Here’s a review of some popular brands:
- Title: I love Title boxing gear. Their brand is quality without being overpriced. It also happens that I see their gloves in boxing gyms all the time. Even their classic training gloves will take years of abuse.
- Fighting: This is Titleboxing’s “premium” brand. The cushion and padding are great but the wrist areas can feel a little skimpy. I have the hook & loop version and the velcro feels very cheap.
- Everlast: One of the most popular names synonymous with the sport of boxing. Much of their gear is unfortunately a bunch of hype. I don’t know why this company has a toy division but many of their products are over-priced and poorly made. Their gear becomes higher quality only when you buy the higher-end pro-grade stuff. You basically don’t see any real boxing gloves from Everlast until you pay about $70 or more. Everything from $65 and down feels too stiff, too much like a toy, or just not anatomically comfortable for the hand.
- Grant: Awesome gloves with protection all over. They’re very well padded and used in a lot of professional fights. There is a lot of padding around the wrist area which is great defensive fighters or guys that take punches on their wrist a lot (peek-a-boo style, high guard, etc).
- Century: CRAP. Absolute crap. Unfortunately, many people see this cheap brand sold everywhere like at Big 5 sports and Sports Chalet and actually believe it’s a real boxing brand - IT ISN’T!
- TKO: Imitation pro gloves. Their gloves might look thick and feel good at first but they’ll quickly break down and stiffen which gives you less protection over time.
- Reyes (Cleto Reyes): Believe the hype. These gloves are made to be more compact at the fist to aid the puncher. It’s important to note that these gloves are made for FIGHTING, definitely NOT TRAINING/SPARRING. The gloves punch harder because they have less protective cushion so it’s important to protect your hands as much as possible in training. They are also very high quality and last forever if you can get the authentic Mexican-made ones (there are hidden links on the internet).
- Rivals: Very nice, expensive stuff that also looks very cool. In my opinion, you can find equally good gloves for a bit less. It’s up to you if you like their cool glove styling. Quality-wise, they are 10 out of 10 - among the best type of equipment you can find.
- Ringside: Just like Rivals, it’s very nice and super high quality at a higher cost. These gloves will last forever! They feel great and will look new even though they are 3-4 years old. The inside and outside of the glove stays perfectly intact. Stitching stays together, the cushion still thick. It’s really great quality. Everyone who’s owned a pair of Ringside can attest to this.
- PRO (ProBoxingEquip): This is a company that is located in Southern California in the LA area. Their punching gloves are crap. I’ve tried even their professional ones before and they go flat within months of heavy use.
- Winning Japan: Winning Japan make the best boxing gear known to mankind. So much care and effort is put into their products and because of the handmade crafting, and products all coming from Japan. Reviews say they are authentic but just take a up to a year for the order to arrive.
Making Your Purchase
The best way to buy punching gloves, and maybe anything else in life, is to go to a store that carries the product and try them out in person. Get a feel for the gear and use your own judgment for “quality” and “feel”.
After you’ve tried out a feel brands and decided which ones you want, go look for cheaper prices online - they will most likely be MUCH MUCH cheaper over the internet. OPTIONAL - you can call the store back and let them know you’ve found a better price online but you’d be willing to buy in person if they can match the price.
Just because you paid more for your punching gloves does not make them better. However, the rule of thumb: you get what you pay for, is still valid. A $25 set of punching gloves will probably not be as good as a $60 pair of gloves from the same store. Use common sense and expect to pay at least $40 online or $55 if buying from a store.
Hand-Painted Custom Gloves
At Boxing Collector, they offer a unique customization service that transforms your Bayoneta gloves into one-of-a-kind pieces of art. Each pair is hand-painted by a talented Mexican artist using high-quality, durable paints and fine brushes. This isn’t just customization - it’s wearable art, made to reflect your personality and passion, all while maintaining the premium performance and durability Bayoneta gloves are known for. Each design is made to order. Handcrafted masterpieces made from high quality cowhide leather.
