RDX Bazooka Boxing Gloves Review

RDX Sports BGC-P1 Bazooka Boxing Gloves (12oz) Review

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 Bazooka gloves are currently the top-of-the-range offering from RDX, both in terms of price and quality. The gloves are designed with two different leather colours stitched together. The other feature that sets these gloves apart is the ‘DuoTra’ strap system, which is essentially a double strap system, but we’ll come back to that in a moment. The gloves are available in sizes 10oz to 16oz, so you can grab all the typical sizes. I’ve been testing out the 12oz versions.

Visuals

One of the reasons I picked a pair of these gloves up is that they look pretty damn cool. Black/silver, black/gold, gold/black or silver/black. The black with silver is a personal favourite. I like the fact that all four versions use the same three colours, with the third colour (in our case gold) being used for the details and stitching. There are also embroidered RDX logos on the cuff and the thumb, which make a great change from your typical printed logo or stitched-on patch.

There are a few other graphics printed on the gloves too: an ‘MG1 Membrane Grid’ logo is right on the front, and the inside of the wrists features the ‘DuoTra’ logo and then some text saying Patent Pending. Personally I’m not too fussed about these, but some people might feel differently about them.

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 first thing I noticed about these gloves is how thick and dense the padding is. We were only testing out the 12oz version, which we would usually expect to be on the smaller side, however they feel just as thick as you’d expect from 16oz gloves. personally I found the padding was a little too thick to start off with and was a little uncomfortable to start with, so the gloves take a little breaking in.

RDX state that these are made with what they call ‘Kevler Leather’. As far as we can tell, it’s just a fancy term for the synthetic leather they’ve used for these gloves. It doesn’t feel as nice to touch as the leather used on other gloves, including the RDX ‘Optimier’ Power Fighter Boxing Gloves we reviewed a while back, however I do have to admit that the ‘Kevler leather’ does seem to be pretty thick and seems sturdy, which is hopefully a sign that these will last quite a while.

The velcro is another area I was impressed with. It seems seriously strong to start off with and takes a proper pull to undo the strap. While it’s a bit annoying, it’s great in the fact that it’s not going to come undone in the middle of a session.

Craftsmanship

Speaking of the velcro, one of the main features of this glove is the dual strap RDX have decided to use. Brands like Hayabusa are famous for using dual strap systems, however RDX have chosen to do it slightly differently. Instead of having the straps go in opposite directions, RDX have designed the two straps to go the same way, overlapping each other. The shorter inside strap hooks on to the inside of the wrist, while the longer strap wraps around to secure to the outside of the wrist. To be honest, the shorter strap is probably all you need, but the longer strap is there to add a bit more security and support. While this is a great idea in theory, I found it’s rather hard to undo, as you have to grip onto each strap individually to take the gloves off.

For the most part the gloves are fairly well made. The stitching isn’t the neatest, but it does the job well and holds everything in place.

Comfort/use

When putting these gloves on they feel pretty tight fitting, with a fairly small hand compartment. The thumb also feels a little short on these gloves, and so feels a bit crammed in. If you have bigger hands, definitely stick to the larger glove sizes, but otherwise it’s just a case of breaking the gloves in until they feel much more comfortable.

The padding on these 12oz versions is pretty thick. Obviously that means there’s a lot of knuckle protection, although they’re a little too firm to start off with. I’d personally suggest these might make a good pair of heavy bag gloves as the padding isn’t likely to break down too much.

Cost

These gloves are the sort of gloves which would definitely suit a mid-level fighter well. Currently they’re just under £50 which is more than a beginner would be likely to want to pay, but I could see that being a good price if you’ve been training a little longer. These would make a great secondary pair of gloves for use on a heavy bag, and are definitely a stylish choice.