Expert Glove Reviews for Every Sport, Job & Season
Somewhere between the boxing gym and the grappling mat sits a genuinely annoying problem: your kitbag is full of gloves that only do half a job. The 16oz sparring mitts are too clumsy for shooting in on a takedown. The bare-knuckle grappling gloves leave your hands exposed the moment someone throws a real hook. MMA … Read more
Here’s a scene that plays out in gyms up and down the country every week: someone turns up to their first MMA class wearing the boxing gloves they bought for the heavy bag at home, tries to grab a training partner’s gi during a grappling drill, and discovers that closed-finger mitts are about as useful … Read more
Walk into any UK gym on a Tuesday night and you’ll spot the divide instantly. On one side of the mats, someone’s rolling bare-knuckled, fingers free, hunting for a collar tie. On the other, a pair of padded 4oz gloves are getting laced up before a sparring round that’s about to turn into a proper … Read more
Your knuckles are fine. It’s always the fingers that go first — jammed in a collar tie, bent backwards scrambling for an underhook, or trapped awkwardly under someone’s knee during a scramble that got away from you. If you’ve ever finished a no-gi session nursing a swollen finger and wondering whether a proper pair of … Read more
Somewhere in every gym there’s a guy who turns up to sparring in 4oz competition gloves because “that’s what the pros wear.” Give it three weeks. His knuckles will look like a relief map of the Yorkshire Dales, and at least one training partner will be nursing a split eyebrow. Gloves for MMA sparring are … Read more
Open finger MMA gloves are the small, padded, fingerless gloves fighters wear for mixed martial arts, built to protect the knuckles and wrist during striking while leaving the fingers free to grip, grapple and finish a submission. That last part is the whole design brief in a nutshell: unlike a boxing glove, which locks your … Read more
If you’ve ever walked into a British gym with a pair of knock-off gloves that fall apart mid-session — or worse, a pair so poorly padded that your training partner winces every time you make contact — you’ll understand why choosing the right MMA gloves isn’t a decision to take lightly. The best MMA gloves … Read more
Walk into any boxing gym from Bethnal Green to Glasgow and you’ll notice something almost immediately: the serious fighters are not wearing the first pair of gloves they grabbed off a shelf. They’ve done the homework. And for good reason — a poorly chosen pair of boxing gloves doesn’t just make training uncomfortable; it can … Read more
Let’s get one thing straight: you absolutely do not need to spend £80 on your first pair of boxing gloves. In fact, if you’re just beginning — hitting a bag in your garage, joining a boxercise class at the local leisure centre, or finally dusting off that punch bag gathering cobwebs in the shed — … Read more
There’s a particular kind of buyer’s guilt that settles in about three weeks after you’ve spent £80 on a pair of boxing gloves you’re not entirely sure you’ll use beyond January. You know the feeling. The bag is hanging in the garage (or, more likely, wedged optimistically in the corner of a compact flat in … Read more