Fortis Renegade Boxing Gloves Review

Fortis Renegade Boxing Gloves (12oz) Review

Brand

Fortis is a boxing and fight wear brand that producing boxing gloves as well as clothing. They aim to make all their products unrivalled in quality, and have plans to become a leader in the fight gear industry.

About the gloves

These are one of two lines of gloves currently offered by Fortis, the other being their Pro Elite range. The Renegade Boxing Gloves come in two colour variations; black & white (the pair we tested) or red. You also have two choices for weight, 16oz or 12oz, which covers the majority of people for either a sparring glove or a pad work glove.

Fortis sent us a 12oz pair of these gloves to test out and give our opinion on.

Visuals

Fortis have gone for quite an unusual aesthetic with their black and white version, making a half-and-half glove that divides right down the centre of the glove, through the middle of their lions head logo (printed on the back of the hand). The back of the thumb is black, and the entire palm is white, keeping this pattern going. The wrist strap (which we’ll go into detail on later) is the only other decoration, with Fortis printed along in, the ‘o’ replaced by another lions head.

Overall the aesthetic is simple but effective, providing a glove that’s stands out without being flashy. I have to admit though, the lions head that’s printed on the back of the hand does feel a bit like an optical illusion, and looking at it too long makes my eyes feel weird!

Below you can find our Fight Gear Focus video giving you a close-up, visual look at these Gloves. Make sure you check out the rest of the video series and Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of our future videos.

Materials

Breaking slightly from the norm Fortis haven’t used the standard cow leather to make the Renegade gloves, they instead opted for goat skin leather. This should provide additional durability as well as making the leather softer and more pliable, and water resistant too. The inner lining of the glove is a moisture wicking material, helping to deal with the inevitable sweat of a hard training session, as well as making sure the gloves feel soft against your hand. They’ve also padded the gloves with multi layered IMF foam, to provide maximal protection for your hands during use. They’ve finished the gloves off with a double Velcro closure to provide as much wrist support as possible.

The materials used have been carefully selected to be high quality, and Fortis have done a very good job making sure the gloves should last for a long time.

Craftsmanship

Fortis handmade their gloves to ensure quality, and they’ve constructed these gloves well, with neat stitching and evenly stretched leather. Whilst the quality of the glove build seems brilliant, there were two issues I found with the glove that do let it down slightly in terms of comfort, but seem to be related to the craftsmanship of the glove. The first one was with the left hand glove’s inner lining, which has slightly bunched up around the fingers, which seems to be related to the attachment of the inner lining. The second issue is slightly bigger and is the padding in the right hand glove. It seems to be either badly positioned in the glove or slightly too small, but either way it creates a ridge at the very tips of the fingers that pinches down when you make a fist. I’ll go into detail on these in the next section on Comfort/use, but it does take away from the comfort and craftsmanship of these gloves. However, they both seem to be issues with quality control, and I’m sure can be easily addressed by Fortis.

Comfort/use

As I’ve just said there’s two issues which limit the comfort of these gloves, the first (the inner lining on the left hand) is a minor issue, which just requires the user to move the lining with their fingertips to make it fit around them better. On the other hand (literally) the padding issue on the right hand does pose a more significant comfort issue because it tightens on your fingers when you make a fist. It’s potentially because I have fairly big hands, and so my fingers reach the very end of the glove (some smaller training partners who’ve tried them on haven’t had the same issue) and it has improved as I’ve broken the gloves in, but it’s definitely something to bear in mind if you have larger hands (we tested a 12oz pair, so potentially a 16oz would have been fine, or like I said it may have been a one off issue that wasn’t caught by quality control).

Other than these two sticking points I do find the gloves nice to use; the inner lining material is comfortable and they feel very well balanced and slim, making it easy to strike hard wearing them. The wrist strap is a particular highlight – Fortis aimed to provide an exceptional level of support with these and they’ve done very well with their design; it’s a thinner Velcro strap that secures the wrist and then the standard leather strap fits over the top. This provides a very strong closure and impressive wrist support, but obviously makes the gloves a little more fiddly to get on and off.

Cost

At the time of writing Fortis are selling these at a discounted price of £84.99, reduced from the regular retail of £99, making them a substantial investment for a fighter. The issues I’ve mentioned do need to be a consideration, but I do think Fortis have worked hard making a glove that’s durable and comfortable, and they’ll last long enough that you’ll definitely get your money’s worth out of a pair.