What Does The Weight Of A Boxing Glove Actually Mean?

When you buy a new pair of boxing gloves, you almost always have a choice of sizes, weighed in ounces (oz), typically giving you selections of 10, 12, 14 or 16, with occasionally a couple more to choose from. After having reviewed a large number of gloves here at Fight Quality, we’ve noticed that there’s a lot of variation between the padding of gloves, so we thought we’d take a closer look.

We’ve taken a handful of the gloves which we’ve reviewed and compared their actual weight to the weight they’re labeled and sold as, to see how the numbers compare, and to test whether there’s any real correlation between the weight of a glove and it’s quality, padding or protection. Obviously as we’ve only weighed one pair of each glove model we can’t comment on whether these are indicative of the brands in general, or how much variation there is in gloves from the same brand.

Feel free to follow the links to see our reviews of each glove if you’re interested in comparing, or seeing our thoughts on each glove. We’ll take a look at our overall findings in a moment.

Listed weight vs actual weight

If we momentarily compare just the 16oz gloves, you would hope that the gloves are all pretty much at the same weight, however we can actually see that there’s a fair bit of difference. The heaviest actual weight is the Fairtex BGV1 Boxing Gloves which are around 17.5oz per glove, with the lightest being the Danger Equipment Deluxe Ultimate Fighter Boxing Gloves which are near enough 14oz. While most gloves turned out to generally be within 1oz of their listed weight, it just goes to show that You should probably start thinking of glove weights as rough classifications of size than strict measurements.

Can we make a judgement on the quality of the glove by how accurate it’s weight is?

You would think that a glove missing it’s targeted weight by that much would mean the glove is low quality, however from the gloves we’ve tested out, that clearly isn’t the case. The Fairtex BGV1 we mentioned a second ago for example are known for being one of the higher quality and more durable Thai gloves on the market. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Lonsdale Xlite Training Gloves were the most accurate in terms of weight, with both gloves weighing the exact same and the closest to actually being 16oz out of all the gloves we weighed. The issue however, is that in our review we pointed out that the Lonsdale Gloves are fairly poorly constructed gloves with low quality materials, so clearly this isn’t the case.

That said, there does need to be some level of accountability for brands missing the listed weight by a large amount. The RDX Optimier Power Fighter Boxing Gloves (which we should point out are no longer on sale) were sold and labelled as 10oz, but our pair actually weigh almost 16oz. This is pretty shocking to see, and even though the gloves themselves were reasonably well made, we can’t help but feel there are some major quality control issues when a product is several sizes bigger than it should have been.

Presumably the higher the weight, the more padding there is?

It’s generally thought that more boxing glove weight equals more padding and protection. In the past this was likely fairly true, but these days there are so many different combinations of paddings and foams that this simply isn’t accurate any more.

Many people suggest choosing particular glove weights for different activities (ourselves included) because as a general rule of thumb it tends to work well enough – If you choose a 16oz pair of gloves for sparring for example, you’ll definitely have more padding than a 12oz version of the same glove. But that doesn’t mean that all 16oz gloves automatically offer more protection. Out of the gloves we’ve weighed, we’d probably say the IMF foam used in the Recoil Boxing Mamba Boxing Gloves (again, sadly no longer available to buy) offers the softest protection on the knuckles without sinking in, despite being just over 12oz in weight, while the Fairtex BGV1 have the most firm, condensed padding, despite being around 17.5oz. In terms of wrist protection though, the Danger Equipment Deluxe Ultimate Fighter Gloves sweeps the floor with both of them, despite having weighed in at about 14oz.

It just goes to show that it’s extra important to check reviews of boxing gloves before you buy. Buying a bigger weight isn’t necessarily any guarantee of the type of padding, comfort or protection a glove has, It really depends on the brand and model of glove. Two of the biggest brands in boxing; Winning and Cleto Reyes both have almost opposite types of padding for example, with Winning being renowned for having the maximum comfort, and Cleto Reyes having a much more compact, fitted padding.

Ideally when looking for new boxing gloves, you need to find out if they’re right for you in terms of comfort and protection before you buy, either by trying them on in person if possible, or by staying well informed through reviews. Then, once you have an idea which gloves you want, you can use the manufacturer’s glove weight as a rough guide for how much padding the glove will have and how big they will be. Provided you’ve already identified a glove with good padding and support, you can choose a weight tailored to what you’re using it for.

For a similar trail of thought, check out this video from Rival Boxing’s Russ Anber.

Anything you’d like to add? Let us know in the comments section below.