Sports Model John Quinlan Autographed Muay Thai Boxing Gloves

Boxing gloves are cushioned gloves that fighters wear on their hands during

boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...

matches and practices. Unlike "fist-load weapons" (such as the ancient

cestus Cestus ( grc, Kεστός), in a general sense meant, for ancient Greeks and Romans, any band or tie. However, it was more frequently used to refer to: * The Girdle of Aphrodite * Boxing gloves used by ancient Greeks and Romans, also written ''C ...

) which were designed as a lethal weapon, modern boxing gloves are non-lethal, designed to protect both the opponent's head and the fighter's hand during a bout. Sparring and other forms of

boxing training Boxing training is the training method that boxers use in order to get more fit for their sport. Training A boxer's training depends largely on the point in their career at which they are situated. If the boxer is just a beginner, a minimal ...

have their own specialized gloves.

History

Leather wraps, Ancient Greece, boxing gloves

Ancient Middle-Eastern and

Egyptian Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt. Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to: Nations and ethnic groups * Egyptians, a national group in North Africa ** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...

depictions of boxing circa 2000 BC showed contests where fighters had a band supporting the wrist. Early depictions of gloves in boxing date back to Minoan Crete circa 1500 BC. The use of hand protection in fighting contests undertaken for sport has been known since

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

. However, the gloves were very different from those of modern boxing, as was the sport itself. In Ancient Greece, it was common practice to tie strips of leather round the hands for protection. In Roman times, this developed into the gladiatorial

, with metal added to the gloves to inflict greater damage. The oldest surviving example of boxing gloves date to around AD 120, coming in the form of two non-matching leather bands that were recovered from excavations at the Roman fort of

Vindolanda Vindolanda was a Roman auxiliary fort ('' castrum'') just south of Hadrian's Wall in northern England, which it originally pre-dated.British windo- 'fair, white, blessed', landa 'enclosure/meadow/prairie/grassy plain' (the modern Welsh word ...

. The brutality of the sport caused the boxing to be banned in AD 393. Boxing experienced a revival in Britain around the 17th century. Many bouts were fought with

bare knuckles ''Bare Knuckles'' is a 1977 blaxploitation film, starring Robert Viharo, Sherry Jackson and Gloria Hendry. The film was written and directed by Don Edmonds. Plot L.A. bounty hunter, Zachary Kane, is on the hunt for a masked serial killer on the ...

and with no standard rules until

Jack Broughton John "Jack" Broughton (c. 1703 – 8 January 1789) was an English bare-knuckle boxer. He was the first person to codify a set of rules to be used in such contests; prior to this the "rules" that existed were very loosely defined and tended to ...

introduced boxing rules known as Broughton's Law in the 18th century, where the gloves were used for practice purposes only. However, many boxers still chose to fight with bare knuckles until 1867 when gloves were mandated by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. Modern boxing gloves started showing up towards end of the 1890s. Over one hundred years of engineering and testing by some of the biggest boxing manufacturers and sport names have helped create safe, durable equipment. Modern boxing gloves include mesh palm, velcro, leather-based stitching, suspension cushioning and new padding for the boxer. The

International Boxing Association (amateur) The International Boxing Association (IBA), previously known as the Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur (AIBA), is an independent sport organization that sanctions amateur (Olympic-style) boxing matches and awards world and subordinate cha ...

approves new designs of gloves according to rules around weight and the amount of leather, padding and support allowed.

Features

Boxing gloves usually come with either lace-ups or

velcro Velcro, officially known as Velcro IP Holdings LLC and trading as Velcro Companies, is a British privately held company, founded by Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral in the 1950s. It is the original manufacturer of hook-and-loop fast ...

. In velcro gloves, the velcro acts as a second handwrap that adds more stability to the wrist. Lace-up gloves provide a more snug and secure fit, but unlike velcro gloves, require assistance from another person to lace, and are usually wrapped with tape before the match. Lace-up gloves can be converted to velcro gloves using a hook and loop converter. Three types of padding commonly used in boxing gloves are

horsehair Horsehair is the long hair growing on the manes and tails of horses. It is used for various purposes, including upholstery, brushes, the bows of musical instruments, a hard-wearing fabric called haircloth, and for horsehair plaster, a wallc ...

padding, foam padding or a mix of both. Foam padding gloves use

latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

and PVC foam with shock absorber. Horsehair gloves last longer than foam padding gloves and are environmentally friendly, but are less protective. In amateur boxing matches, glove color is restricted to

red Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...

blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

, often with a white "scoring area" at the knuckles to help judges see and record points from a proper punch. Boxing gloves are worn over

hand wrap Definition A hand wrap or a wrist wrap or Kumpur is a strip of cloth used by boxers (and participants in other combat sports) to protect the hand and wrist against injuries induced by punching. It is wrapped securely around the wrist, the pa ...

s, which help stabilize the fist area against injuries such as the eponymous boxer's fracture of the fifth

metacarpal In human anatomy, the metacarpal bones or metacarpus form the intermediate part of the skeletal hand located between the phalanges of the fingers and the carpal bones of the wrist, which forms the connection to the forearm. The metacarpal bones ar ...

. The hand wrap is usually made from

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

and is available in either or .McKenzie, C., Lissenden, H
''Boxing Fitness''
Bloomsbury, 2013.

Types of gloves

Safety

The impact of gloves on the injuries caused during a fight is a controversial issue. Hitting to the head was less common in the bare-knuckle era because of the risk of hurting the boxer's hand. Gloves reduce the number of cuts caused, but a report by the British Medical Association concluded that gloves do not reduce brain injuries and may even increase them, because the main cause of injury is acceleration and deceleration of the head, and fighters wearing gloves are able to punch harder to the head. Gloves may reduce the number of eye injuries, especially if they are thumbless, but retinal tears and

detached retina Retinal detachment is a disorder of the eye in which the retina peels away from its underlying layer of support tissue. Initial detachment may be localized, but without rapid treatment the entire retina may detach, leading to vision loss and blin ...

s still occur to boxers wearing modern gloves.Dillner L. "Boxing should be counted out, says BMA report". ''BMJ''. 1993;306:1561–1562. One non-peer-reviewed study has estimated the risk of death from bare-knuckle boxing at 14,000 deaths per million participants. This is 184 times more deaths per million participants than for modern professional boxing, which has 76 deaths per million participants (according to the same study). Data for the number of fights and deaths from the bare-knuckle era is incomplete, and there were many differences in rules and medical care. Bare-knuckle boxing matches were usually fought until one fighter could not continue, with bouts sometimes lasting hours, and a few fighters dying after they were carried to their mark to restart the fight when they would otherwise have been unable to continue. (The

London Prize Ring Rules The London Prize Ring Rules were a list of boxing rules promulgated in 1838 and revised in 1853. These rules were based on those drafted by England's Jack Broughton in 1743 (known as the Broughton Rules) and governed the conduct of prizefighti ...

later specifically stated that a fighter must "walk to his own side of the scratch ''unaided''" (emphasis added) or lose the fight.) Bare-knuckle rules also allowed grappling and throws, and some deaths were caused by a fighter hitting his head on a stone or rail.

Weighted training gloves

Weighted training gloves are sometimes used in order to add resistance to punching exercises. Such gloves standardly range between one and three kg. As their usage over time typically increases the boxer's strength in that range of movement, they are used to increase the speed and power of a punch; in order to achieve this, their usage may be alternated with normal unweighted punching practice. Care is taken that the muscular adaption for the weight does not impair the normal punching action. Light dumbbells are sometimes used on a similar basis to weighted gloves.

Illegal modification of boxing gloves

On 16 June 1983 at Madison Square Garden,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, Luis Resto unexpectedly beat the previously undefeated

Billy Collins William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York (retired, 2016). Collins ...

. An investigation found Resto's gloves had been illegally modified, with padding removed by his trainer,

Panama Lewis Carlos "Panama" Lewis (November 4, 1945 – September 19, 2020) was an American boxing trainer. He was convicted of tampering with the gloves of Luis Resto for his fight against Billy Collins Jr. in 1983, which subsequently led to the end of Coll ...

. As sport journalist Oliver Irish summarized, "Lewis served two years of a six-year prison sentence for assault, conspiracy, tampering with a sports contest and criminal possession of a deadly weapon (Resto's fists)".

Influence of boxing gloves in other fight sports

Open-fingered and open palm

MMA gloves MMA gloves or grappling gloves are small, open-fingered gloves used in mixed martial arts bouts. They usually have around 4–6 oz of padding and are designed to provide some protection to the person wearing the glove, but leave the fingers avail ...

or 'grappling gloves', which are frequently used in

mixed martial arts Mixed martial arts (MMA), sometimes referred to as cage fighting, no holds barred (NHB), and ultimate fighting, and originally referred to as Vale Tudo is a full-contact combat sport based on striking, grappling and ground fighting, inc ...

bouts, are not boxing gloves. Similar to the wrist-supporting, closed-thumb, broken-knuckle ''kempo gloves'' popularized by Bruce Lee's 1973 movie ''

Enter the Dragon ''Enter the Dragon'' ( zh, t=龍爭虎鬥) is a 1973 martial arts film directed by Robert Clouse and written by Michael Allin. The film stars Bruce Lee, John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It was Lee's final completed film appearance before his death o ...

'', they provide some padding to the person wearing the glove, but leave the fingers and the palm area open and available for intricate

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

and

grappling Grappling, in hand-to-hand combat, describes sports that consist of gripping or seizing the opponent. Grappling is used at close range to gain a physical advantage over an opponent, either by imposing a position or causing injury. Grappling ...

maneuvers such as

clinch fighting Clinch fighting is the part of stand-up fighting where the combatants are grappling in a clinch, typically using clinch holds. Clinching the opponent can be used to eliminate the opponent's effective usage of some kicks, punches, and melee we ...

, which are illegal in the sport of modern boxing.

List of boxing competition gloves approved by associations

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Boxing Glove

Gloves A glove is a garment covering the hand. Gloves usually have separate sheaths or openings for each finger and the thumb. If there is an opening but no (or a short) covering sheath for each finger they are called fingerless gloves. Fingerless glo ...

Martial arts equipment Protective gear Sports gloves