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Did you know this about Lonsdale?
British sports equipment, textile, and footwear brand focused on boxing and mixed martial arts established in London in 1960.
Former boxer Bernard Hart started the brand as a boxing equipment company.
It eventually branched out into clothing as well.
The company is named after Hugh Laughter who in 1891 set up the first organized boxing matches with gloves.
Following the deaths of three boxers in bare-knuckle fighting.
The Lonsdale brand was associated among time with boxing’s biggest names like Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson, Lennox Lewis, Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton, etc.
Their boxing gloves price range starts from $23 for the cheapest crappy bag gloves and up to $200 for professional quality fight gloves.
Of course, they have in-between products like the sparring gloves that I’m reviewing in this article.
The 18 oz sparring glove description
It was priced at $60(44.99 British pounds) with a 30% applied discount on their official store https://www.lonsdale.com/lonsdale-pro-spar-gloves-762258#colcode=76225806.
These Lonsdale Pro Spar Gloves are a slip-on style featuring a touch closure strap for a secure fit.
Being crafted with padding for shock absorption and mesh paneling for breathability.
The glove has a lot of pompous technologies in the description:
✔I: Core – Utilises the latest developments in injection foam molding and extensive work on optimizing foam density for maximum performance.
✔M: Core-mesh moisture-wicking inner palm providing ventilation and the regulation of temperature to optimize performance.
Being categorized at their Elite level is just marketing.
Glove’s visual
First of all, the package looked very professional and I got excited because I wanted this glove to be as advertised.
But when I opened the package, the smell of glue got me thinking of a china shop and I started getting my hopes down a gear.
Then I pulled out one of the gloves, it was the left glove and I immediately saw a big flaw.
On the front side of the glove, it looked like someone put some glue over the stitching in the thumb area.
It looks really bad as you can see for yourselves:
This was a very ugly flaw, but I knew that I could return the product and get a refund.
I bought the gloves from sportsdirect.com
They have good customer service.
I had problems with some other products before and I solved them fast by contacting their customer service at the provided email address.
But this wasn’t the only issue with these sparring gloves.
Craftsmanship
They’re made of leather or so they say, the leather is thick and they look solid, but the quality control for this glove was second to none.
The craftsmanship is terrible for a glove at this price range, regardless of the obvious flow.
The stitching is very ugly made, with no pride for their product.
There are a lot of brands out there that make their products with pride.
You can check some of the best here https://onlybesttop.com/top-boxing-glove-brands-used-by-the-best-pro-boxers
It looks like a glove from the $20 price range.
How did I feel wearing them?
Thinking about the fact that this was advertised as a sparring glove.
When you slide your hand inside you find a very unfriendly space with a lot of nods at the tips of your fingers, that is very scratchy and hard.
The glove itself is very very hard, It’s layered foam seems like is made for punching walls, not people!
In absolutely no case you should punch people in the head with this joke of a sparring glove!
Feels like they’re made of wood!
Thumb positioning
Hard to make a proper fist with this glove, the thumb is positioned awfully and also very short.
When you think about the fact that these are 18oz gloves!
Which means they were mostly created for bigger people.
I don’t see any way a person with large hands could stand the shortness of this thumb.
It’s placed a little more towards the inside of the glove to be safer in sparring.
But the fact that they’re made from some foam hard as wood cancels this.
The velcro closure has too much-elasticated fabric and when you’re closing it.
A large part of the scratchy material remains on the outside!
This makes them dangerous for sparring cause you can scratch your sparring partner bad with them.
In the palm, the glove has a breathable fabric to keep your hands well ventilated during training.
The grip bar is placed well but because they’re rigid makes me think that I’m doing pull-ups for the fingers each time a make a fist. 🤣
It has a water-repellent fabric inside attached to the wrist area of the glove.
Which is not sewed as one piece because the glove has some kind of leather inside in the upper wrist area.
The water repellent material is really thin and flimsy, so I think that the sweat will get fast into the wood, sorry I meant foam.😅
A very few things I like about these gloves, are Lonsdale branding and the color scheme.
Are they worth buying?
Maybe you’ve managed to read the review and got here then this part is useless to you, but still I’m going to make a pro and cons part for the people who didn’t read the first part.
PRO
👍 Lonsdale branding and the thick leather(or wannabe leather)
👍 Color scheme
CONS
👎 Very poor quality
👎 Bad china shop smell
👎 Hard as wood, not good for sparring
👎 Very short thumb
👎 Uncomfortable glove inside and out
👎 Too highly-priced and false advertised
Conclusions
In my opinion, this glove isn’t worth buying unless you need to demolish some walls from your home and don’t have a hammer.😅
They are just too damn hard for any gym work, you can try using them in the heavy bag.
But the shape of the glove is a little too oval at the knuckle area.
The oval shape and the fact that they’re so rigid it’s creating an effect of instability when you make contact with the bag and you may hurt your wrist! 💡
If you want to learn more about boxing gloves check out this article: How to choose the boxing gloves as a beginner
Maybe the glove will break in with time. Considering that time is the most important resource in a person’s life I can’t encourage anyone to waste theirs breaking in boxing gloves, not these anyway…
