Top King is a pretty well-established company and the products are far from copycats, have their own characteristics and Top King Muay Thai Boxing Gloves is definitely not an exception.
Top King Muay Thai Boxing Gloves Review
Protection: 9.7 / 10.0
Durability: 8.8 / 10.0
Comfort: 8.3 / 10.0
Cost Efficiency: 8.5 / 10.0
Check It Out: On Amazon
Pros
- Outstanding padding
- Lots of padding
- Sturdy cowhide leather
- Excellent air regulation
- Suitable for all training types
- Ideal for sparring (Great for blocking strikes)
Cons
- Small hand compartment
- Some people find it “bulky”
Table of Content
- Training Performance
- The Durability
- Comfort
- Cons of Top King Boxing Gloves
- Aesthetics
- The Cost Efficiency
- Should You Really Buy Top King Muay Thai Boxing Gloves?
Top King is located at Samutsakorn which is quite near to my favorite Coffee & Steak place in Tambon Don Ki Di. If you decide to go to Thailand and visit Top King, make sure to go to that restaurant and try delicious steak recipes there.
Top King is a fairly new company which has been grown very quickly in the last years. The people in the management had worked at several other martial arts companies and in my opinion, it is the biggest factor for this huge growth.
Top King is one of the most popular brands for Muay Thai.
The best way to describe these gloves is that this pair is unique and mid-level gloves. As a side note, In many cases, these gloves are preferred for only punching as well.
1. Training Performance
This glove has a quite firm wrist support. This brings some advantages and disadvantages as well. First of all, it gives less flexibility and freedom for your wrists. So while clinching your wrists are relatively less comfortable. So you will clinch with more effort and spend more energy. If you will not focus on boxing and mostly clinch etc. this is definitely something to consider. So if you are concentrating on clinching more, you might want to check out my Fairtex BGV14 Boxing Gloves Review as it is more suitable for it.
How is the punching performance of Top King? Is it any good?
Actually, it is quite good in all aspects!
Top King provides very solid wrist support and if you think of concentrating solely on punching (the meaning you focus on heavy bag work, mitt drills and will do less clinching), this pair is just might be the most ideal pair as the lots of padding help you avoid hand and wrist injuries. In addition to that, the wrist hand alignment will be quite firm all the time.
The wrist closure is not long, however, the wrist compartment is quite close to your wrist and it does not need to be that long for providing a good support.
Even though this glove is really bulky it has actually a quite small hand department. It is not negative nor positive. It is just a preference. For example, I like boxing gloves which have smaller hand compartment. When this is the case, I feel the glove “more” which results in that I feel like I have more control over the glove. So my punching performance is better with the gloves like Top King. As I stated, it depends on your preference as it also has a disadvantage which is explained in the comfort section.
The padding memory is awesome at first years. However, you might start having slight problems after a year or two years of usage. When this is the case, some parts of foam have a lot more deformation than the others and it results in irregularity in padding. Yeah, that sometimes happens and when the padding quantity is a lot, it is more likely to happen. And Top King has some serious padding quantity. With that being said, it is just a slight irregularity and you won’t be facing it for 2 years. Even though this might not look like anything, I am sure that advanced fighters would appreciate to know it beforehand.
Sparring
You know that the glove is big and the hand compartment is small. So the padding quantity is a lot and it is quite protective. It is seriously one of the bulkiest gloves on the market. However, the padding is light and does not change the weight much. It is made of less dense materials. So this does not lower punching speed.
The pair also has some serious quantity of padding at the upper part. So when you block elbows, kicks, and punches, your hands are less likely to have bruises.
In addition to that, the padding is also quite soft so your sparring partners won’t complain anything about your glove.
This glove has a segment for the thumb part and it provides your thumb to stay in a certain position whether you are punching or not. This is another plus for the safety of your partner and you.
This glove is also handmade and has a really short break-in period. The construction and padding will feel normal just after one week of punching. It is basically nothing.
2. The Durability
The padding offers at least 2 years of good training and after that, you can use it one more year and the training performance will lower only a little. Basically, that “pop” sound will be lower after 2 years.
The padding protects your hand well for about 3 years.
Shortly, the padding will last around 3 years.
The cowhide leather is premium and one of the sturdiest leather type out there. It can take the constant punishment for years without any issues. As a side note, it is also the most popular leather type for bag gloves.
So considering all of these, the glove won’t have any defects around 3 years.
Note: I got the information for durability from trusted members of boxing forums and read the reviews etc.
3. Comfort
The wrist compartment is small and the glove does not let sweat escape well. However, the inner lining wicks the moisture like there is no tomorrow and it compensates that the sweat escapes less. This glove’s lining is a bit larger than usual so it has a bigger capacity to wick the moisture thus your hands will feel fresher.
It does not have one big mesh panel like many other gloves. It has strategically placed panels to let air in and out. I personally find separate mesh panels quite effective as there is more than one place to allow air in thus it is more effective for air exchange.
Hand compartment is small and if you have bigger hands or just might feel uncomfortable with your regular size. So you may need a couple of weeks of training to feel better with it.
In the following video, you can see the shape, the bulkiness of this pair clearly and also if you want to have an idea about how Top King Muay Thai Boxing Gloves would perform during the mitts, heavy bag, you might want to watch it.
4. Cons of Top King Boxing Gloves
The hand compartment is quite small. It brings some advantages as these were explained above. However, it also makes your hand feel uncomfortable. It also causes your hand to sweat more. These are cons alright but these are definitely not a deal breaker as almost every glove on the market has small issues like these.
The glove is bulkier than usual. However, it is the thing with gloves, which are in the same class, including Twins Special and Boon Training Gloves. However, Top King is even bulkier than them and you should definitely know about this before you buy and train with it.
The bulky part is the padding as it has a small hand compartment. While punching you don’t “feel” the bag or mitts as much as while punching with other gloves. But this issue is quite common among this style of boxing gloves.
5. Aesthetics
It has a cool design and even though the logo does not cover a lot of space, it stands out. In addition to that, you have a lot of color selections and you can easily find one for your taste.
6. The Cost Efficiency
Well, I can say that the price is just fine. You get premium genuine leather and this particular glove constantly gets really good feedback from people in boxing and Muay Thai community. I also checked out a lot of Sherdog and a couple of other martial arts forums and so far people are really satisfied with the glove. Considering all of these, when I compare Top King to other boxing gloves I would choose a similar price tag.
7. Should You Buy Top King Boxing Gloves?
It honestly depends as it is on the higher end of average gloves.
With that being said, Top King provides a lot of awesome qualities such as good durability, incredible knuckle protection with lots of padding. Let’s not forget that it also has really good quality and soft leather. Basically, Top King has some unique qualities like the padding distribution to provide quite quality punching sessions.
If these are appealing to you, check out Top King Boxing Gloves on Amazon.
I believe that I included everything about this pair in this Top King Muay Thai Boxing Gloves Review however if you have any experiences with this pair or any more questions feel free to mention them below!
This is an amazing review on the boxing gloves. I love how one of the pros is that the gloves have a lot of padding, and I feel like this would make a lot of people comfortable, because nobody wants to get badly hurt as a result of poor padding. I also like the fact that you put up a video, so I’m able to see what exactly you’re talking about and how it would be advantageous to me. This again, is a lovely work. Keep it up.
Yeah, it has a lot of pros and I included as much as detail about the padding as I think it is superior. I also like that it is not heavy as well.
Many people prefer it for bag work and the main reason is that people know that Top King’s padding will protect them. Hopefully, I will include my own video review when I will get back to Samut Prakan so stay tuned.
Are there different gloves for different levels? As a beginner, is there a suggested glove that you would consider entry level?
Well, it is quite protective and you can use Top King for every training type. I don’t see any reasons why you can’t use it during your first years of boxing or Muay Thai training.
This is a great article. I have a lot of friends who are involved in all kinds of MMA. This article and site in general is something they can all benefit from. I’ll definitely share this with my friends and followers on Facebook as I have more than a few of them on my pages over there. Thanks for this site and these articles. They will appreciate it.
This would be really awesome.
Thanks for the thorough review! I always look for high quality materials and craftsmanship. Can’t really go wrong with real leather! In sports equipment it’s usually wise to pay for quality since you will using the product for hundreds or thousands of hours and few dollars more will usually pay it itself back multiple times with longer product life. Not to mention high quality products are usually more comfortable to wear.
Top King is one of the rare companies which uses top-notch leather for shin guards. As you said, when you consider the long durability, investing a good one is a smart choice.