VIRUS Disaster Combat Shorts Review

VIRUS Disaster Combat Shorts Review

Brand

VIRUS Performance are a brand who focus on sports clothing with the aim of helping improve performance amongst athletes. They particularly excel when it comes to compression wear, with it being a huge focus of theirs, but also produce a range of items. As well as designing clothing for weightlifters, fitness enthusiasts, competitive motorcyclists and more, they also focus on MMA, with martial artists Cub Swanson, Daniel Strauss, Ian McCall and Dan Hardy amongst their team and ambassadors.

About the shorts

The VIRUS Disaster shorts are shorts designed with martial artists in mind. They’re similar to what you might expect from other brands’ premium MMA shorts, however with a fairly short 6″ inseam, the cut looks closer to Glory Kickboxing’s official shorts than traditional MMA shorts.

Aesthetics

There are four colour options available, so you can grab whatever you prefer. The main style seems to be red with black sides, however the other versions offer you a black alternative with either blue, green or light grey sides. I grabbed a pair of the red with black sides. Personally I think this option looks best (and it goes well with the black and red theme I seem to have with the rest of my gear), but that choice is down to your own personal preference.

The shorts themselves have a fairly straightforward design, and don’t follow the bold, in-your-face designs many MMA and Kickboxing shorts have, instead choosing to focus on the smaller details and more subtle visuals. The right side has a stylised ‘//VIRUS’ running down the leg, while the left side simply has the VIRUS icon and a silver stripe running across at an angle. The front and back of the shorts also feature similar visuals, with ‘VIRUS X // The passion that defines you’ on the front and another icon on the back.

From a distance that almost looks like it, but if you look closely behind the left leg, there are some graphics printed on showing off the features of the shorts. They’re printed on with a slight shine, but are otherwise almost un-noticeable. There’s something I really like about it though – it highlights what I meant about the subtle details.

Materials and Craftsmanship

The shorts are made in Taiwan, and use a blend of polyester and spandex allowing for 4 way stretch ability, as well as VIRUS’s Cool Jade technology incorporated into the fabric.

There’s only the one layer of fabric, with no inner lining, which helps keep the shorts lightweight and allows heat and moisture to pass through easily. The graphics all seem to be printed on with some (presumably vinyl) flex print which stretches well with the material and doesn’t distort at all.

Each of the panels of material is securely double stitched in most places and even triple stitched in some of the weaker areas, so there shouldn’t be any problems with the seams splitting anywhere.

VIRUS have added in a number of features to help you get the perfect fit. Firstly, there’s an inner lace which you can tie in order to keep things tight. Then the front secures with a series of Velcro panels. Once the shorts are on and in place, the gel print waistband grips to the skin slightly and makes sure there’s no slipping.

Comfort/use

Typically when I train, I’ll tend to wear Thai shorts, so these made quite a refreshing change to wear for once. I’m a huge fan of shorter cuts, and don’t really get on as well in longer board shorts, so I found the fit of these to be pretty good.

As mentioned in the previous section, there’s a lot of adjustment in these shorts, which means that getting a good fit is pretty quick. I personally found once the shorts were on, they do usually stay in place quite well, though I will say that if you’re wearing something high-waisted underneath (for example compression shorts) they don’t grip quite as well, and in my experience tended to ride up a little bit.

Other than that though I find it really hard to fault these shorts in the slightest. Provided you like the material, design and fit, you shouldn’t have any problems with them at all. They’re super lightweight, which means they don’t really irritate you at all, and they’re flexible enough to not limit your range of motion in the slightest.

Cost

These shorts usually cost $56.00, which is slightly on the higher side of the fight short market. They aren’t an unreasonable price however, and considering the good quality and their usability across almost any sort of training, we’d definitely say to consider these as an option.