Warrior Fight Wear Warrior Storm PU Boxing Gloves Review
See them on the Warrior Fight Wear website
Brand
Warrior Fight Wear are a UK based brand who started out making a range of fitness and martial arts clothing but quickly expanded into producing protective equipment, including boxing gloves, shin pads, head gear and wrestling Equipment. They provide fight gear to a range of sports, including boxing, K1, Muay Thai, taekwondo, karate and wrestling as well as weightlifting and fitness accessories. Warrior Fight Wear sent us a pair of these gloves to review and provide our feedback on.
About the gloves
These are the ‘entry level’ boxing gloves offered by Warrior Fight Wear. They’re cheaper than their Warrior Pro Leather gloves and are marketed towards beginners or people looking for budget gloves to use as a second pair, for use on the heavy bag for example. They’re only currently available in blue and white, and available in 16oz, which means that beginners could use them in both sparring and pad/bag training sessions. The gloves have some of the common features including a grip bar and attached thumb, but also a slightly padded palm which adds a little more protection in Kickboxing or Muay Thai.
Aesthetics
The first thing I noticed getting these gloves out the bag was that despite the low price they actually don’t look like budget gloves. Most of the cheaper synthetic gloves you find tend to look ‘baggy’, like the outer material is too big and fits loosely over the padding, however the Storm gloves look very well made. The actual design is nice and simple; the main body of the glove in blue, with a white thumb and a black palm. The Warrior Fight Wear name and logo is printed on the back of the hand and on the wrist strap. It would be exciting to see more colours added in future, although at the moment, they also make a leather glove with a similar design, which comes in black for a slightly more refined look.
Materials
These gloves are made from PU leather, a synthetic form of leather made with plastics. It’s often used to cut down on costs and typically this doesn’t have the same strength or durability of real leather. It makes it an ideal material to make entry level boxing gloves, and while your children might not inherit them, typically if they’re well-made they’ll last you long enough. The inside of the gloves is lined with a quick dry material to keep them fresher for longer, which helps to keep them hygienic.
Craftsmanship
This is where I feel that Warrior Fight Wear have done a great job, these are some of the best made gloves I’ve seen. They’ve got reinforced stitching across the palm and around the thumb, and there’s been no sign of any stitches coming loose whilst I’ve been testing them. The Velcro on the wrist strap fastens very securely (though there is a slight issue with it that I’ll get to later). Overall these gloves are as well made as a pair of higher cost leather gloves.
Comfort/use
I found these gloves were a pleasure to use. The 16oz gloves performed very well in all situations. When hitting pads or a punch bag they were durable and gave good feedback for each strike, and also in sparring they provided great protection for my partner, thanks to the well-padded fist and the padding which protects the thumb from stops accidental gouges during striking, or injuries. They’re also great protection to the rest of my hand thanks to the nice density of the padding around the knuckles, and the reinforced and padded wrist strap helps to prevent unwanted movement in the wrists on impact. This is a big deal for a beginner glove, as most have very little support and can end up reinforcing bad habits, so it’s good to know these gloves offer decent stability.
The only issue I’ve found with using these gloves is getting the fit tight enough around the wrist. I find I have to pull the Velcro really tight to get a good fit, which leaves an inch or so of exposed Velcro sticking out. On pads or bag work this really isn’t a problem, but when sparring that can be really uncomfortable for sparring partners, especially when close up, for example during clinching.
Cost
You can pick up these gloves on the Warrior Fight Wear website for £30, making them really good value for money. You can pick up cheaper gloves, but for the quality of these it’s well worth investing a few pounds more. They’re suitable for beginners, but also for more experienced fighters looking for a cheaper set of gloves for hitting the bag or pads with so they don’t ruin their more expensive gloves in training.
Looking to buy these?
See them on the Warrior Fight Wear website
Pros/Cons
+ Good value for money
+ Well made
+ Added thumb protection and reinforced wrist
– Only available in one colour
– Only available in 16oz
– Not real leather
I like the production quality of the reviews and how much effort is put into graphics, videos etc. Sometimes though, I notice the lack of true negative reviews or criticisms that may jeopardize a relationship with a glove manufacturer. I’ve never seen the yellow bar in your fight quality chart dip below 2/3rds. Reviews are all about differentiating between good and bad quality products and to be honest, if all the reviews are good, these articles are more marketing material than critique.
Love the website though and the articles you produce are top notch.
Thanks for the feedback. The reason we avoid critisizing too harshly is that we’re aware what we do is fairly subjective, and just because we class something as a negative doesnt mean it carries as much importance to the person reading the review – we avoid telling people if something is outright ‘bad’ because something which is bad by a pro fighter’s standards might make a really suitable glove for a beginner. We tend to reflect on this in the Price sections.
We’d rather people know the details and choose the right product for them than have us outright tell them if a glove is good or bad.
Our bar visuals are rough indicators of how the product feels it excels in different areas. Its not common for us to give out a 9/10 score, which usually means we believe it’s really excelled in that area, and likewise for a glove to get a low bar score, that would mean we think the glove is severely inadequate even for the price, which thankfully doesn’t occur often. We definitely have scored some gloves poorly, including Lonsdale’s Pro Style gloves and RDX’s bag mitts. Unfortunately things do get a bit murky when you compare product bar stats directly, however that’s to be expected on subjective ratings on reviews sometimes written 2/3 years apart.
All that said, the critisism is appreciated and we’ll definitely have a think about whether there’s a clearer or more consistent way to display all of the information in future.