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Ah, the perils of new fight gear. We’ve been there before, fumbling through the crappy Everlast gloves at Sports Authority. Lucky for us, RevGear was able to let us test run some of their Samurai Series gear, and we want to be 100% honest with you — we think they’re almost perfect.
The Gloves:
When I first put on the Kote boxing gloves and formed my hand into a fist, I could feel the quality. One of my least favorite times in life are when you have to break in your gloves, but these feel fantastic immediately. The gel and shock absorption is top notch and through multiple tough practices they still seem damn near brand new. I’ve split a glove within the first ten minutes before, and I don’t even hit that hard, so either I’m unlucky or buy really crappy gear, so these RevGear gloves made me feel like a golden god.
The one negative — aesthetically I like the armor and darkish coloring of the gloves, but during sparring my partner said he didn’t really like the dark color, and they were hard to see. I kind of agreed with him, so that should be noted. I know some people who spar exclusively with white or blue gloves for this reason, and these are pretty damn dark. For mits or the bag though, these are absolutely amazing.
The headgear:
I’ve worn a few different pieces of head gear, some better than others, but the RevGear Happuri head guard displays the quality of the boxing gloves reviewed above. First off: the lack of chin strap fills me full of love. As a bearded man, chin straps are the bane of my existence with head gear, and the Happuri was super comfortable to me. Now, I don’t know if this review is completely fair for everyone in that sense, but for me personally, I loved the minimal strap to keep the gear in place. The overall padding is fine and comfortable, the colors are the same darkish gray/green armor plated look the gloves have, and all in all I liked the piece a lot. It’s cheek protectors kind of got in my field of view and I had a difficult time seeing punches every now and then, but for the most part, everything stayed in place and was damn comfortable.
The MMA gloves:
I very rarely hit pads in MMA gloves, or even train in them at all to be honest, but I have an old pair that I bust out every once in a while. These RevGear gloves were nice, and they felt great (although I think my pinky is really small or the gloves seem a bit big), I just don’t have much to judge them on. They share the same colors as the rest of the series, and the padding feels fantastic. Like the boxing gloves, there is no need to wear them in, and overall they feel like quality. I would recommend them if you use MMA gloves.
The shin guards:
I. LOVE. THESE. The back strap alone would have me singing their praises, but that coupled with the gel absorbing my kicks, I kind of felt like I wasn’t hitting hard enough. I don’t train my kicks very often, so I was pretty rusty training, but I had no problems with these staying in place after getting sweaty, or any issues at all. Really, really great training gear.
Final thoughts:
I was sore when I began this article, now I kind of want to go back out and train again, and isn’t that the best bottom line for your gear? I haven’t had this much fun with my training tools since I first started. Great products and highly recommended.