ONX Sports are a relatively new brand in the MMA equipment market. Still, they are producing the next generation of MMA fighting and protective equipment. One of their flagship products is the ONX Boxing Gloves named X-Factor.
If you’ve taken a look at these ONX gloves and you just want to know more about them before you buy, then I’ve got you covered. In this article, I’ve done the research for you and compiled the details.
By the end of reading this meaty article, you’ll know everything you need to decide whether these gloves are as good as people say and if they’re the right choice for you.
The original Trevor Wittman training glove that offers one of the best X-strapping for professional fighters.
Table of Contents
Everything you need to know about the ONX Boxing Gloves
If you’re considering buying these gloves for yourself, strap in because I’ve done all the research and even had several discussions with Tanner Weiks, the Director of Business Development at ONX Sports
I’ve learned many interesting things about these gloves to find answers to many common questions you might have because I know I had many!
What’s the difference between the X-Factor and Apex boxing gloves?
The Apex series is a more traditional boxing glove with a lace-up strapping and still requiring hand wraps. The X-Factor series differs because it has an X-shaped internal support, has a velcro strapping option, and does not require hand wraps.
If you’ve looked around on the ONX Sports website, you’ll notice they have a more affordable glove option in the Apex training gloves.
They are definitely worth considering, as they are still designed to offer more support than a traditional boxing glove.
The Apex boxing gloves have an internal strapping system laying lower across the back of the hand. Like the X-Factor, it gives stability from the wrist into the palm.
Wrist problems are where many training fighters get issues because of the potential for their wrist to bend during the impact of a strike.
The Apex (just like the X-Factor) glove does come with heat-forming technology. You can use a hairdryer at home to heat up the inside of the glove and get a perfect fit around your fist.
If the glove is better molded around your fist, then you’re minimizing gaps between your hand and the materials. Less space between the two keeps your hand better protected because of less movement. It’s a bit like bubble-wrapping a fragile jar before transporting it. If you don’t wrap it snugly, it’s more likely to get damaged from external impacts.
ONX Sports also recommend Muay Thai fighters use the Apex glove because it has more flexibility in the wrist for catching kicks.
The Apex helps to offer a lot more wrist support than a typical boxing glove. So the Apex glove is kind of like X-Factor’s little brother. Still, the X-Factor is the improved version.
What’s the difference between the X-Factor and New Era MMA gloves?
The ONX boxing gloves are specifically designed for protecting the wrists and hands during a mix of mitts, heavy bags, and sparring training for fighters. The “New Era” MMA gloves are patented MMA gloves designed for professional fights to provide better hand protection and reduce eye-poking in a fight event.
If you want to know more about this, I highly recommend checking out my other article about Trevor Wittman’s MMA gloves.
Like all the gloves in the ONX Sports collection, they are an ingenious creation of Trevor Wittman, one of the best coaches in MMA & UFC.
How does the strapping work for the ONX boxing gloves?
The X-Factor goes one step further than the Apex or any traditional boxing glove. It has a unique X-shaped internal strapping system that goes across the back of the hand, allowing for a broader reach into the thumb and pinkie finger.
With that, there is additional strapping that pulls the X shape to tighten around your palm, pulling in the thumb for a more compacted fist.
With the strapping pulling around the back of the hand, it actually aids more support to the wrist, too. The straps from the back of the hand also connect to the wrist strapping, bringing everything together in one solid protective fist shape.
Tanner Weiks, the Director of Business Development for ONX Sports, explained it best to me:
The X-Factor series is unrivaled in the level of support it offers the wearer due to the strapping system. It has been designed to dramatically reduce the level of compression the weak joints, bones, and ligaments experience while landing a punch. This series also pulls the hand into better positioning, aligning all of the strong bones in 90-degree angles.
Tanner Weiks, Director of Business Development at ONX Sports
Sounds fancy, right? Basically, it means that the strapping system pulls your fist together into a more natural position, unlike conventional boxing gloves.
Having a more natural fist position when landing a punch equals less problematic impact on your joints and ligaments in the hand and wrist. Especially when the fist and wrist are in a stable position.
If you think about your typical boxing glove, a velcro strapping system will have just one big strap across a somewhat higher part of the forearm. So it’s unlikely that this strap will even protect your wrist joint and keep it in a safer straight line with your fist.
With a lace-up strapping system for a typical glove, the wrist support can be better because the laces usually go further up the wrist and into the base of the palm. You have a bit more flexibility to tighten the laces around your wrist and inner palm to get a more secure fit.
In the history of boxing, many fighters would lace up their gloves to the front of the palm, which pulled around the wrist tighter, a method known as pinching.
This pinching method did offer some more support with connecting the wrist strapping to the back of the hand, resulting in more wrist stability. The problem with that is that the laces can come loose really quickly, especially in professional fights.
Fighting commissions would then have to ban the method of pinching with laced gloves because loose gloves mean unnecessary fight stoppages, which isn’t good for TV.
The founder of ONX Sports explains it best in this video, where he highlights the similarities and differences between a standard lace-up glove and the X-Factor strapping system:
So this is where the X-Factor glove goes several steps ahead of either of these basic options. The glove is designed to offer everything that a traditional glove simply can’t.
The innovation in the boxing glove ended with attaching the thumb to the rest of the glove. Hand wraps are commonly used to literally fill a gap, but now Trevor Wittman steps in and introduces a glove where you don’t even need to wear them.
Why you don’t need to wear hand wraps with the X-Factor ONX boxing gloves
Hand wraps are used with most traditional boxing gloves to offer the hand and wrist support that the glove doesn’t have. Your fist shape becomes more secure to your wrist for a better straight angle for a punch when appropriately wrapped. The wraps fill up a lot of the open gaps that are inside the glove.
With the X-Factor ONX boxing gloves, the improved strapping system goes around the wrist and into the palm, back of the hand, and even thumb. Pulling the strapping into place equals a much tighter fit around the actual shape of your hand.
In a regular boxing glove, entering your hand into the glove very often leaves many open gaps of space to fill. Hand wraps help fill that gap, but pieces of cloth can only offer some stability in the wrist.
Hand wraps help alleviate some of the problems with regular boxing gloves, but more often than not, they create new problems.
For example, many fighters will wrap their hands to have material across the palm of the hand to grip onto. But this method can create more unnatural gaps when making a fist and create openings for injury when punching.
A standard boxing glove, when strapped, would present several gaps in the sides of the hands. With the X-Factor glove, the X-shaped straps pull in tighter than any ordinary glove can, giving a much-improved fit.
The improved fit results in a consistent and safe position for the wrist and hand. There’s little space for the hand to move inside the glove, and every punch lands much more directly with the correct parts of the fist.
Picking the right ONX boxing gloves size
Luckily, ONX tries to make the glove size selection as easy for you as possible. I’ve pulled it to this article with a few edits to make it easier to read:
| Glove Size | Bag or Mitts/Pads Work | Technical (Light) Sparring | Full-Contact (Heavy) Sparring |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 oz | 165 lbs / 75 kg or less | 165 lbs / 75 kg or less | 135 lbs / 61 kg or less |
| 16 oz | 215 lbs / 97.5 kg or less | 215 lbs / 97.5 kg or less | 195 lbs / 88.5 kg or less |
| 18 oz | 300 lbs / 136 kg or less | 300 lbs / 136 kg or less | 285 lbs / 130 kg or less |
So as you can see from the table I’ve put together, the more you get towards heavier hitting on a partner, the more consideration you have to make for their safety.
To give your sparring partners more safety, you usually need to go UP a glove size for the extra padding.
When I asked ONX about which glove size I should go for if I wanted an all-rounder glove, they recommended 16 oz for me:
If you are going to do any sparring, I would definitely recommend the 16oz gloves. With that size, you will most likely get the best use out of them as they would work great for just about everything (sparring, heavy bag, mitt work, etc). If you don’t plan on doing much full contact sparring or are primarily looking for something to use for mitt work, timing, and heavy bag, the 12oz size would probably be more suitable.
Tanner Weiks, Director of Business Development at ONX Sports
It seems that the recommendation for glove size can change mainly depending on the need for heavy contact sparring or not. Tanner also said:
The main reason for the 16oz recommendation, in regards to sparring, is primarily for your partners safety. Industry standards have shifted over the last few years and most gyms (at least in our network) require 16’s for any sparring work so we have stuck to that rule of thumb, but that is just dependent on your gym and their rules.
Tanner Weiks, Director of Business Development at ONX Sports
Best sizing for the heavy bag
If I wanted these gloves primarily for heavy bag work, I could happily go for the 12 oz gloves or the 16 oz as well. That’s because I’m 70kg/155 lbs and fall in-between the sizing recommendations depending on my use.
It’s definitely worth considering what you have already used before, if you have used 16 oz for bag work, and how you liked it.
There’s a big jump between the padding for a 12 oz glove to the 16 oz. The weight and size differences are something to consider, and you would need to get used to them.
A lighter glove can feel a bit more snappy, like you can do speed work much better. Still, the extra padding on a 16 oz pair could help you out a lot with additional hand protection as well, making hefty bag work sessions easier.
Best sizing for mitt or pad work
If I were considering the X-Factor ONX boxing gloves primarily for mitts/pad work, I would probably be going for the 12 oz.
I fall within the weight range for the 12 oz (as I am 70 kg / 155 lbs) that they would be suitable for bag and mitts and even light technical sparring if I wanted to use them for it.
The size and weight difference between 16 oz to 12 oz would be very noticeable. So much so, I’m sure it would have a positive effect on maximizing precision and speed output. But in contrast, heavier gloves could force you to improve speed and power output with the added resistance!
Best sizing for sparring
If I was looking to get a pair of X-Factor ONX boxing gloves and use them primarily for sparring, then no doubt I would be going for 16 oz gloves myself.
I weigh somewhere around 70 kg / 155 lbs, which puts my options between either the 12 oz or the 16 oz gloves. If I was primarily buying these gloves for full contact sparring, then I’d need the 16 oz.
If you are a big guy or have big and heavy hands, you might need to think about an 18 oz pair.
The important thing here is to protect your partner during sparring. It’s one thing to win the round, but you don’t need to send your opponent to the hospital to do it.
Bigger cushioning in the larger glove size spread out the impact, causing fewer acute injuries for your partners.
Would I recommend the X-Factor ONX boxing gloves?
I have done extensive research, as you can see. And I’ve come to pretty solid conclusions that these gloves are a significant scientific advancement for protective equipment in the sport of MMA.
It’s only a matter of time before I get my hands on the entire ONX protective equipment set. They seem to be the only brand in the market trying to push progress in protective equipment and keep fighters injury-free and competition-ready.
Where to buy the X-Factor ONX boxing gloves?
The original Trevor Wittman training glove that offers one of the best X-strapping for professional fighters.
- Provides superior support to the wrist and hand
- Maintains optimal hand position when punching
- Patented strapping for best fit and comfort
- No need to use wraps
- Great for all training types
- Used by pro fighters like Justin Gaethje
- Sizes 16 oz & 18 oz
- Pricey
- Needs a good heat mold for first use
You can sometimes find the X-Factor gloves available to buy on Amazon, eBay, and on the ONX Sports website when they are in stock.
But get ready to snap them up, they fly off the shelves and it’s getting more difficult to get your hands on a pair.
You can even customize your gloves by adding your name (or anything else up to 10 characters) on your gloves. Then your opponent can get your name imprinted on their cheek once you get to work!
Final thoughts
The more time I spend researching and learning about the ONX X Factor boxing gloves and talking to guys at the brand – the more convinced I am about their authority.
I’m confident that these gloves are the best thing out there currently available. Just read the reviews for yourself!
No wraps? Shame on you.