RDX T6 MMA Sparring Gloves Review

RDX T6 MMA Sparring Gloves Review

Summary:

We found these gloves to be good value for money with plenty of knuckle protection and feel comfortable but perhaps lack durability compared to a genuine leather pair.

See them at amazon.com

See them at amazon.co.uk

Brand

RDX is one of the UK’s most widely known fight brands. They have a reputation for producing with reasonable price tags for beginner and intermediate level fighters. Because of this, RDX are a popular choice for people’s first equipment when they’re starting out in martial arts. RDX have now expanded to the US and their gear is available in a number of countries worldwide.

About the gloves

The T6 MMA gloves are built for sparring, meaning they have thicker padding around the knuckles than a competition MMA glove. Rather than weights like a boxing glove they come in differing sizes, small to extra large, and they’re available in 3 colours; red, blue and yellow. We got hold of a blue pair to test out and let you know what we thought.

Visuals

The body of the glove is split across the knuckles, half blue (or your chosen colour) and half black (extending down to the wrist strap) and the thumb and inner wrist are both white. The inner lining of the glove has RDX printed all over it in grey, the outer edge of the wrist strap has an RDX logo on it, and the black section of the back of the glove has a white RDX printed on it. I think the writing on the coloured side of the glove says power fighter, but it’s not the easiest to make out.

Overall the gloves manage to fit a lot onto a small area, but they don’t look too busy and we feel like they have a clean, modern aesthetic.

Materials/Craftsmanship

RDX have used their Maya Hide leather, which despite what it sounds like is synthetic, not real leather. This calls into question the durability of the glove as it’s rare that a synthetic leather lives up to the durability of the real animal hide. That being said, in my time testing the glove they’ve stood up well and aren’t showing much sign of wear and tear.

The T6 MMA sparring gloves have a shock absorbing gel lining, which I have to admit was a bit surprising – you can throw shots surprisingly hard into a punch bag without feeling like your hands are taking a pounding, though we’ll come back to this in a bit.

RDX machine manufacture their gear, and they’ve done a good job on the T6s. The stitching is neat and the leather spread evenly. The gloves are reinforced in stress areas and there’s no signs of there being anything that might compromise the glove. The one thing that would worry me is the finger loops, which feel quite thin and not very secure – there’s no sign of damage here during the time we tried the gloves out, but it is worth noting that they could prove to be an issue over time.

Overall the materials and craftsmanship is pretty reasonable, and we’re particularly impressed with the padding.

Comfort/use

Comfort wise the gloves feel good, only thing worth noting is the finger loops on the T6’s. In our experience it’s possible for them to slip down your fingers and make the glove uncomfortable until you adjust it. This isn’t a deal breaker for us, because we found good technique stopped it from occurring (i.e. it was those dodgy punches that don’t land quite right that caused the glove to shift) and even when it does it’s more of a minor inconvenience.

As we already said, the padding on these gloves feels like it gives great protection considering how small they are, but you have to be careful firing off power shots on something like the heavy bag because they don’t off as much wrist support as a boxing glove does despite a long wrist strap – it’ll teach you solid technique, but also means you’re at a higher injury risk.

Cost

The T6 sparring gloves are available for £21.99 on the RDX website, which we feel makes them good value for money – they offer plenty of knuckle protection and feel comfortable – the only thing to consider is if you’re using them a lot would you be better off with a real leather pair for durability?