VELO Leather Muay Thai Sparring Gloves Review

VELO Leather Muay Thai Sparring Gloves (16oz) Review

Brand

VELO Sports are a UK based brand that was founded in 1999. They produce a variety of striking kit, including gloves, shin guards and striking pads. Their companies mission statement says that their goal is to provide quality, comfort, design and durability in their products, and develop a global brand that is recognised for its products and customer service.

About the gloves

These gloves are the newest of several pairs that are available on the VELO website, where you can find pairs for sparring, mitt work and bag work. The leather muay thai sparring gloves are available in the standard 10, 12, 14 and 16oz options, giving you the choice of a size to suit your needs. They are currently only available in the one design, in red.

VELO sent us a 16oz pair of these sparring gloves to test out and give our opinion on.

Visuals

First up, as we said, these gloves are only available in one design, which obviously limits you to a single colour choice – in this case a classic boxing glove red.

The back of the hand is bright red, with a black and white back across the finger tips, with ‘let’s fight’ emblazoned along it. On the back of the glove, near the thumb, is the VELO ‘V’ logo and on the little finger side of the glove ‘VELO’ is printed in white apart from the ‘L’ which is black. The palmar side of the glove is white, apart from the section, which is black ringed with red. The cuff of the glove is piped in black, and the wrist strap is black as well and on the back of it is the VELO logo patch, white and red with their website listed underneath, and on the inside of the wrist ‘AGL-PR1’ is printed in white. A fairly unique feature of the gloves is several lines of decorative stitching that run across the back of the hand, around the thumb and up the outside of the glove around the fingertips. This is a clever and relatively unobtrusive way break up what is normally the largest surface of the glove, and provide a really interesting effect that we’ve not seen before.

Overall the visuals of this glove are good, though if you prefer a more classic looking, understated glove (Such as the Cleto Reyes gloves we’ve reviewed previously) then you may find the design a little ‘busy’.

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

VELO use 100% full-grain leather for the construction of these gloves, which is a traditional choice. Whilst synthetic leathers have improved a lot of people still believe that the real deal is the best for durability and quality in a boxing glove. They’ve lined the gloves with a moisture wicking and very comfortable material that should help keep them smelling fresher for longer. The padding of the gloves is a triple density foam, which is well positioned to provide a great level of shock absorption, allowing you to hammer punches into the pads or bag without worrying about injury (bear in mind we used 16oz gloves, 10oz might not provide the same level of protection).

We’ll get to the price of the gloves later, but while we’re talking materials it’s well worth mentioning that the vast majority of gloves at this kind of price point are made from a synthetic leather and it’s brilliant to see an affordable pair that are 100% leather leather.

Craftsmanship

Another plus point for the VELO gloves are the fact that they’re totally handmade. The extra time and effort put into the manufacture of the gloves typically leads to a higher quality of finish, and we think this shows on these gloves. The stitching is neat and tidy, the padding and leather are distributed evenly and the gloves look well made.

We’re impressed by the quality of the materials and the quality of the craftsmanship of these gloves, and again it’s worth mentioning, it’s rare to find this kind of craftsmanship on a pair of gloves at this price.

Comfort/use

These gloves are great to use, the padding provides a great level of protection, both for heavy punches on the pads and bag and ensuring no one gets hurt during sparring. As we mentioned earlier the inner lining of these gloves is moisture wicking, and very comfortable against your hand.

If there’s one problem we’ve found using these it’s that they are pretty tight around your hand, even before you’ve got wraps on and in particular on the thumb. This eases a bit as you break them in, but they are just a tight pair of gloves, so this may be worth bearing in mind if you have big hands.

Cost

If you hadn’t guessed it yet, this is the part that we think makes the rest of this glove impressive – they retail at £29.99. For under £30 you can get a handmade, 100% leather comfortable pair of gloves, and frankly that’s impressive. Previously if you’d asked us what the best cheap glove option would have been the first thing we’d have done is recommended saving your money for a bit longer and getting a slightly more expensive pair, but frankly a beginner with a small budget could do a lot worse than buying a pair of these gloves.