Choosing the Right Brand of Boxing Glove

When buying boxing gloves, the brand you buy definitely matters. Almost all established fight gear brands who sell boxing gloves will have developed their own distinct style and create their gloves in completely different ways. Before looking into it though, you need to determine what sort of budget you have and what you’re going to be using that pair of gloves for.

We might be a bit biased here considering we’re a review website, but our advice is always to try to do some research on the brand and product before buying anything.

While it might be a good sign that a brand is popular, are used by professional fighters or that all of your friends use them, it doesn’t mean that every product that brand sells is on the same level, and even then it doesn’t mean that the glove is necessarily the best option for what you’re looking for.

Ideally you want to do some research into the brand, how their gloves tend to compare to other brands, the features the gloves have, then pick the pair of gloves that sounds like it matches what you’re looking for best. There’s no point forking out hundreds on a pair of gloves that look good if they turn out to be uncomfortable to use.

Buying a new boxing glove is sort of like buying a car. There are many different brands out there, some have features others don’t, some handle differently, and some have a different style. At low prices, you’ll get a cheap one which will fall apart pretty quickly, isn’t enjoyable to use, and generally lets you down. Then you get the moderately priced ones, which are often of a good quality. Then, past a certain price, you’re really paying for finesse, class and the superb attention to detail which went into designing them.

When looking at the different brands you can see a couple of different business models:

Premium brands

E.g. Reyes, Grant, Winning

These brands are the type who deliver nothing but the absolute best. You can usually spot these brands being used by professional fighters. The prices are usually expensive with these brands, however most of what you’re paying for is small refinements and attention to detail.

Affordable / Mid-range brands

E.g. Title, Blitz, Hayabusa

These brands are what you’re more likely to see around the gym. They often price their gloves at much more competitive prices. Some brands focus a bit more on giving you the best value for money, while others focus more on being innovative.

Broad brands

E.g. Everlast, Lonsdale

What we’re referring to as the ‘broad’ brands are the ones which try to make gloves to cover as much of the market as possible. From top of the range gear which could compete with some of the premium brands, right down to the crappy budget gloves you find in your local sports shop. Everlast are a great example of this; just look at the refined, handcrafted MX Hook & Loop Training Gloves which sell for $179.99, compared to the cheap looking, shapeless Classic Training Gloves which RRP for $29.99 but are often discounted to even less than that.

These brands are a brilliant example of why you should always do your research into fight gear before buying. Just because the brand name is popular, doesn’t guarantee the gloves will be good.

Of course, different brands also sometimes focus on different types of gloves, for example Mexican brands or Thai brands both have unique styles. We went over this in a bit more detail in our article on the Types Of Boxing Gloves.