Justin Gaethje says the gloves he wore at UFC Freedom 250 felt noticeably different, as renewed talks swirl around Trevor Wittman’s ONX glove design.
Gaethje described a clear change in how the gloves performed on fight night. “The gloves I fought in this week were different,” he said. “The leather was different. It was a little bit thicker, I think, and so it was softer. And so every time I’ve ever fought, I’ve had the most excruciating pain in between my hands right here, and I didn’t feel that at all this fight. This was looser and it was thicker. It’s weird. Better. Better for comfortability. You have no idea how uncomfortable we are, and you’re constantly pulling on the tongue here, trying to get compression.”
Gaethje was blunt about his long-standing issues with the current UFC gloves. “The issue is the comfortability of the athlete and the performance of the athlete,” he said. “Because the thing is, the gloves we’re fighting in now are f--king terrible. It’s hard to make a fist. You have to use your entire muscle of your arm to make a fist. And so by the time we get to the fight, [your forearm is] exhausted. And then the pressure in between your fingers is, like, something you can’t replicate.”
Trevor Wittman’s ONX gloves have been discussed for years as a possible answer to glove-related problems, including hand damage and eye pokes. Wittman said, “So Hunter reached out to me three weeks ago, four weeks ago, and said he wanted to ignite the conversation again,” adding, “So we’ll see where that goes.”
