Hayabusa T3 Boxing Gloves Review

Hayabusa T3 Series Boxing Gloves (16oz) Review

Summary:

We found these gloves to be packed with unique features – a dual strap system, hand splints, a sweat absorbing thumb, engineered leather and more. A beginner probably wouldn’t be too fussed about any of these bits, however for people who are serious about their training the extra benefits are well worth it.

Buy them on hayabusafight.com

Brand

Hayabusa are a popular brand, with strong ties to MMA, but also branching out to various individual martial arts as well. They strive for high performance, and many of their products feature bold, unique designs. They are currently working alongside Glory Kickboxing as the official equipment suppliers.

About the gloves

The T3 Series, as well as sounding cool actually represents the fact that the series is the third evolution of Hayabusa’s popular Tokushu range. If you haven’t heard of Hayabusa’s Tokushu gear before, it’s one of their main lines of equipment, alongside the Ikusa range. We’ve actually previously reviewed the Hayabusa Ikusa Charged Shin Guards which felt like they were designed mostly for MMA, while the T3 range is much more optimised for striking.

Hayabusa sent over a pair of these gloves for us to test out and provide feedback on. Make sure to also check out our Hayabusa T3 Shin Guard Review.

Visuals

Just from the appearance of these gloves alone, it’s clear that they stand out from the crowd. Unlike most gloves which are formed with just a single piece of leather covering the back of the hand, these gloves use five different panels to create a segmented appearance. These include two black leather sections (one of which covers the fingers), a coloured leather section, a section with a carbon-fibre styled appearance and then a microfiber suede panel which extends to the thumb. These panels are a representation of the inner construction of the gloves, but also happen to look pretty interesting with the combination of textures.

The main glove range currently features three* colour options; red, blue or grey. I’ve been using the red version, and had a number of positive comments about the gloves (including one that they have a bit of a ‘Deadpool’ vibe going on). Depending what colour you choose will change the coloured panel on the back of the hand, the majority of the palm, the stitching colour and the colour of the inner lining. While most brands offer a choice of outer colours, it’s refreshing to see a brand add colour to the lesser seen details such as the stitching and inner lining, which are typically just black.

Update: Hayabusa have since added some new colours to the range, including Green and Purple.

Update 2: They’ve gone and done it again! Hayabusa have added a load of new colour options, but this time straying away from the black base, allowing for a load of new colours (images below). The full range currently consists of 16 colour variations.

If these colours aren’t enough for you, they’re also available in an (almost) all-white version which looks great. More importantly, check out the T3 Kanpeki Gloves, which use the T3 model as a base, but with a vintage brown, full grain leather covering.

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

The outer material covering the majority of these gloves is Hayabusa’s ‘Vylar‘ engineered leather. Yes, that means that the gloves aren’t technically real leather, instead they’re an animal-free material which Hayabusa claim performed much better against the regular wear-and-tear gloves face when put through testing. When you actually touch the gloves in person, you can tell that it’s just not quite the same as real, high grade leather, however you wouldn’t be able to tell easily just from looking, and I have to admit that out of all the synthetic leathers we’ve tried out, Vylar is by far the closest to the real thing.

The thumb on these gloves is what they call a ‘Sweat-X’ thumb with a microfiber suede covering, which can be really handy to wipe sweat from your brow mid-training. If you’ve used Hayabusa’s Tokushu Regenesis gloves, you’ll have seen this feature before, however they’ve now extended the fabric halfway on to the back of the hand, meaning you have a bit more of an area to use. Personally I often find myself awkwardly trying to wipe away sweat with the sleeve of my T-Shirt when training, so these turned out to be pretty handy. If you’re in a really intense session, you might find you’re trying to wipe away more sweat faster than the thumb can dry off, and they’ll feel a bit damp, however if you just use it every now and then it seems to do the job quite well.

The inner lining is an area which have had a few complaints with previous Hayabusa gloves, so is an aspect the brand have clearly tried to improve. The inner lining is comfortable enough, and I haven’t personally had any issues with the fabric bunching up in the common problem areas such as around the fingers. The material isn’t quite smooth or silky, but at the same time doesn’t feel scratchy or overly synthetic.

The fabric itself actually contains traces of silver, which is well known for it’s antibacterial properties, and apparently in between the fabric is a thin lining of plastic designed to prevent sweat from seeping into the foam, which should theoretically keep the gloves fresher for longer. Unfortunately I found that this means the inner lining takes much longer to dry out than most gloves, and it’s therefore still important that you air the gloves out properly in between sessions and don’t leave them trapped in your gym bag. This isn’t really helped by the fact that the numerous perforations on the palm of the hand are a little small, and I’m not convinced how much they’re really helping the gloves to ‘breathe’.

Craftsmanship

These gloves have been packed in with a load of unique features, and two which work well together are the splints down the back of the hand and the dual wrist strap, which both help support the wrist and keep the hand firmly in position. The splints are basically four thin panels (compared to only three panels on the previous version) within the glove which are a little sturdier than the padding, that limit the ability to bend your hand backwards too much and help keep a good hand alignment. When the wrist strap is tightened, it’s pretty hard to actually bend the hand backwards, which means that you’re much less likely to end up injuring your wrist if you hit a bag, pad or face at the wrong angle, and should help you hit with the right part of your knuckles.

Having this stability is absolutely superb while striking and really helps reduce strain on the wrist. Clinching however isn’t as perfect. If you’re planning on using these gloves for Muay Thai, or are an MMA fighter who tends to clinch up a lot in sparring then you do need to be aware that limiting the hand movement can make it a little bit more awkward. It’s not the end of the world, and you can still manage to clinch, but it is a bit harder without the natural hand flexibility. Obviously depending on what you want the gloves for, this might not matter in the slightest.

The cuff on these gloves uses a dual strap to secure the hand as tightly as possible. As well as the main velcro strap, there’s a secondary elastic strap, which pokes through and secures the wrist from the other side, as you can see in the image below. The elasticated strap secures on first, and the main leather strap then wraps around and covers that. Having the two straps in different directions means that you can really clamp the hand into place, with the elastic making sure the fit is nice and tight. There’s also a natural impact protection that comes with having two straps as well, which is great for blocking punches or kicks. The support and protection on these is easily on par with gloves with shielded wrists like the Danger Equipment Deluxe Ultimate Fighter Gloves, except without covering your entire forearm.

On previous dual strap Hayabusa gloves, there were apparently issues with the hard velcro on the inner strap catching on people’s hand wraps, so on the T3 they’ve made the hard velcro section slightly smaller, keeping the soft velcro on the other side much longer, so that the outer strap has plenty to secure on to.

Comfort/use

When putting these gloves on for the first time, you can really feel the support before you even start hitting things. The grip bar is well positioned and the hand compartment feels about right too. There’s a fair amount of room inside, but at the same time your hand feels securely in place without being excessively squeezed by the padding. The fingers and thumb all fit in quite snugly, with the fingers resting nicely in the end of the compartment and the thumb in a fairly natural feeling position. I have accidentally hit my thumb on one occasion (A badly placed body shot ended up colliding my thumb with an elbow) which seemed to hurt more than I would expect.

My guess would be that the microfiber covering just isn’t as sturdy as a leather covering, but at the end of the day that’s a pretty rare occurrence, and I’ve not had issues with the thumb at all on pads, bag work or sparring other than that.

While I’ve already mentioned that the dual wrist straps are super supportive, they are unfortunately a little more of a pain to put on and take off than a single strap. You can’t really slide your hand in and out without undoing both straps, and if you aren’t already used to the two strap system then it takes a bit of getting used to. There’s a rubber tab at the end of the inner strap to help you grab hold of it, but I found myself fumbling around a few times when I first started wearing these. The more you use the gloves, the more used to taking off the straps you get, however it’s still an extra step when taking your gloves off or putting them on.

I’ve been working with the 16oz version of these gloves, so there’s a good amount of padding as you’d expect. The padding is a little on the dense side, although when you punch there isn’t a hard contact or a huge amount of bounce. Instead it almost feels like your knuckles sink in a little bit, with the padding almost absorbing the impact slightly. I don’t feel these gloves really need much of a break in period as they pretty much felt the same out of the box as they do now. The gloves work great in all sorts of training, and would make good sparring gloves for striking, however I’ve personally found them especially nice to use when hitting Thai pads, where the support can really come into play and ensure great alignment when hammering shots in.

Cost

Update 03/2021: Since we wrote the review, Hayabusa have now updated their pricing structure. The current prices at the time of this update are $139 and £110, rather than the values shown below.

At £95 in the UK, or $99.99 in the US, these gloves are definitely more towards slightly more advanced athletes or professional fighters. With these gloves you’re probably paying a little extra for the additional features which other gloves don’t have – the dual strap system, the hand splints, the sweat absorbing thumb, the engineered leather and more. A beginner probably wouldn’t be too fussed about any of these bits, opting for something a little more basic, however for people who are serious about their training the extra benefits are well worth it.

Looking to buy these?

Buy them on hayabusafight.com