How fighter frustrations brought back the old UFC gloves

In April, the UFC announced that it would debut a new glove for fighters that would offer more mobility and flexibility while reducing eye pokes and hand injuries. The new gloves, coined “3Eight/5Eight” (the 3Eight glove is for three-round fights, and the 5Eight gold glove for championship fights), premiered at UFC 301 in June. It marked the first time since fingerless gloves became mandatory for all fighters back in 1997 that the fight glove had evolved.

“This redesign will truly be a game changer for the entire sport of MMA,” UFC CEO and president Dana White said in the April statement. “These gloves will feel lighter, fit fighters’ hands better, prevent injuries and provide maximum flexibility during the fights.”

But after five months — 21 UFC events (pay-per-views and Fight Nights) and 10 “Dana White’s Contender Series” cards — the UFC decided to ditch the new gloves and return to the original fingerless gloves.

“The new gloves are now the old gloves,” UFC CEO Dana White said in a surprise announcement ahead of UFC 309 last weekend. “You know what, there were good intentions with the new gloves. We spent a lot of time, energy and money on them. … It didn’t work out and it is what it is.”

The abrupt about-face came as a shocker.. Interestingly enough, the switch came just days after independent researcher and data scientist Nate Latshaw posted a detailed report demonstrating a significant drop in knockouts from when the new gloves were introduced.

Comparing the knockout rate of the old gloves — now referred to as “classic” by the UFC — from Jan. 1, 2023, to May 31, 2024, to when the new gloves were in play from June 1 to Nov. 9, Latshaw’s findings showed an 8.5% drop off in knockout rates.

UFC glove data update prior to #UFC309

This figure compares KO/TKO and knockdown rates between the old gloves (going back to the beginning of 2023) and new gloves (the last ~5 months) both overall and by weight class.

The results don’t look great for fans of KO/TKOs and… pic.twitter.com/4Tka0oFO7Y

— Nate Latshaw (@NateLatshaw) November 14, 2024

Between Latshaw’s report gaining traction on social media and UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones balking at the fit and feel of the new gloves ahead of his fight with Stipe Miocic at UFC 309, the timing of the announcement felt like a little more than a coincidence.

“The shape, the curve in your hands, they’re very uncomfortable for me,” Jones said last week in New York. “I was actually really stressed thinking, ‘How am I going to go into fight week wearing these gloves that I don’t even really want to train in?'”

When the switch was announced, several UFC fighters breathed a sigh of relief over the promotion reversing course.

“When I first got the new gloves, I didn’t like them,” lightweight Renato Moicano told ESPN. “I think they look and felt cheap. The material was not very good, and I didn’t like the design.”

Moicano had one of his best performances with the new gloves, a decisive TKO victory over Benoît Saint Denis in September. The fight was stopped due to a doctor’s intervention.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘This is a bad glove,’ and then I had an awesome performance,” Moicano said. “Maybe it actually was the glove? I don’t know. But I don’t think it affected my performance at all.”

Women’s flyweight contender Erin Blanchfield echoed Moicano’s assessment of the gloves feeling “cheap.”

“I wasn’t opposed to the new gloves when they announced they were coming, but when I saw them, I didn’t like how they looked,” Blanchfield said. “I didn’t like the design, and the colors looked tacky and cheap. They looked like something you can buy from a sporting goods store.”

Blanchfield, who relies heavily on her wrestling and grappling, found that the gloves felt restrictive and affected her grip during her unanimous decision victory over Rose Namajunas earlier this month.

“It felt harder to close my hands because the fingers were so tight,” she said.

While Blanchfield eventually broke in the new gloves during training, she was issued a new pair ahead of her fight.

“I had my cornermen working on the gloves the entire time in the locker room,” Blanchfield said. “Just pulling at them, stretching them out, really trying to loosen them up for me. They literally had to make a tool that everyone in the locker room passed around to loosen up the fingers.”

Strawweight Angela Hill, who lost a decision to Tabatha Ricci in the new gloves in August, said they “felt like having memory foam wrapped around your fist.”

“I hated them at first,” Hill said. “But after training in them for a while, I didn’t mind them as much. They are way thinner and aren’t formed at all. The old gloves had more of a natural curve to them.”

The restrictive feel that Hill and Blanchfield are referring to was originally installed to prevent fighters from extending their fingers and committing eye-poke fouls. But both said that the intent didn’t match the outcome.

“I don’t think they did anything for eye pokes,” Hill said. “Until you break them in, it’s harder to make a closed fist.”

What about the decrease in knockouts?

Latshaw, a data scientist with a focus on quantitative analysis in MMA, noted that the research didn’t include the variety of ways to obtain a knockout.

“I continue to caution against drawing any particularly strong conclusions from the data,” Latshaw told ESPN. “I’m looking at all knockdowns and all knockouts, which is really not a good way to study the impact of the gloves because I’m including knockouts and knockdowns that come from head kicks, elbows, knees, things like that where the gloves aren’t impactful.”

While the old gloves are now back in play, it doesn’t mean the “new” gloves are gone forever…yet.

A UFC spokesperson told ESPN that “some fighters may still be wearing the new gloves in upcoming events while UFC re-stocks its inventory of the classic gloves.” According to White, fighters will use the “classic” gloves at UFC 310 on Dec. 7.

“They tried a new idea, and it ended up being a mistake, so they decided to go back to the old gloves once they saw the gloves weren’t working out,” Moicano said. “That’s better than to keep trying to push a glove on us that everyone hates. This is what was good for business.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get the perfect glove, but I hope they keep trying.”