Top King Glove Review : Super Air vs Empower Designs

Read this complete Top King Boxing Glove review to find out more about how this brand fits, the difference in their models, and how these gloves compare to traditional Muay Thai and western boxing gloves.

How do Top King Boxing Gloves fit?

Top King Boxing Gloves are an excellent hybrid between traditional Muay Thai style gloves and western style boxing gloves.

Portions of Top King Glove design are true to Muay Thai style, with padding along the outside palm of the glove to catch kicks and parry away strikes. Also, the thumb is attached to the hand compartment with a durable piece of reinforced leather.

However, Top King Boxing Glove models have a longer cuff than traditional Muay Thai gloves (like Fairtex BGV1, Windy BGVH, Twins BGVL-3, and Buakaw Muay Thai Gloves). The shape of the cuff is also differs from traditional Muay Thai gloves. Across the back of the glove, the cuff’s edge uses a semi-circle shape. This design feature is used in slightly different ways on Top King’s different models – we will discuss this in detail below!

Again different from other Muay Thai brands, Top King’s glove compartment is slimmer and closer to a western style boxing glove than the wider glove compartments used by other Muay Thai brands. For this reason, Top King Boxing Gloves are popular among fighters with smaller hand and wrist size, and fighters that prefer a tight fitting glove compartment. They offer a snug and secure fit. Keep in mind that the size of the hand compartment increases very slightly with the increase in glove weight (for example, 16oz hand compartment will be bigger than a 10oz). Some fighters with larger hand sizes report thumb compression and the need to break these gloves in before they feel really comfortable.  If you prefer to wear hand wraps while training, keep in mind that these glove compartments may already feel small if you’re coming from a more traditional Muay Thai glove.

Top King Boxing Gloves are handmade in Thailand using genuine leather. They use a strong Velcro wrap around closure, with padding underneath the thumb and along the wrist strap. There is also additional padding across the back of the glove around the wrist area. These gloves use a firm and medium sized grip bar, with multiple layers of foam protection across the knuckles.

How do Top King Boxing Glove Models Compare?

In this product review, we will compare the 6 different Top King Boxing Glove models: Super Air (TKBGSA), Super Star (TKBGSS01), Super Snake (TKBGSS02), Empower (TKBGEM01), Empower Creativity (TKBGEM02), and Empower Camo Boxing Gloves (TKBGEM03).

These 6 models can be divided into 2 groups: “Super” models (including TKBGSA, TKBGSS01, TKBGSS02) and “Empower” models (including TKBGEM01, TKBGEM02, and TKBGEM03).

Review on Top King “Super” Boxing Gloves:

The Super models all follow the same Top King Super Air Boxing Glove design, and are appropriately named Super Star & Super Snake. Top King Super Air Boxing Gloves use mesh material for their signature clima cool technology. This model has mesh fabric extending from pinky finger side of palm down under the thumb compartment. This panel of fabric is a triangle shape. It allows for more padding across the outer most palm of the glove (a measurement of 7 inches on a 10oz pair of gloves). Mesh fabric is also under the finger tips, on the other side of the grip bar. The grip bar on Top King Super Air Boxing Gloves is straight. You can feel the seam where leather and mesh meet along the balls of your fingertips.

The cuff on these models is stitched to the inside of the glove opening. The glove opening is a tear drop shape that leave a small circle of exposed skin on the palm of your hand. Along with the mesh fabric, this feature also helps promote air flow.

The cuff at the back of this glove is straight across. A semi-circle seam attaches the cuff to the hand compartment. This shape helps to prevent excessive wrist extension, while still allowing wrist flexion required for Muay Thai training.

Review on Top King “Empower” Boxing Gloves:

These models also use clima cool technology, but the use of mesh material is slightly different than above. The Empower models have less padding across the outer most palm of the glove. In comparison to 7 inches above, Empower only offers 4 inches on 10oz pair of gloves. Because of this, Empower has a different shape when it comes to the mesh across the palm. This piece of fabric starts wide by the outside of the hand. It gets narrow to accommodate the hand opening, and then ends down under the thumb compartment. Ventilation holes across the thumb is a feature unique to the Empower Boxing Glove models, Top King Super Air models do not have this feature.

The grip bar on Top King Empower Boxing Gloves has a slight U shape. This design is a menial difference from the models above, with not much difference when comparing performance of the gloves. Leather fabric is over the fingertip palm of these gloves instead of the mesh material.

The cuff on Top King Empower models is anchored to the outside of the glove and wraps across the glove opening. The glove opening is more of a straight slit, compared to the tear drop shape used for the Super models. The amount of skin that remains exposed with this style of glove opening depends on your hand and wrist size.

Along the back of the glove, the cuff uses a semi-circle shape. This shape along the edge of the glove provides even more rigidity and wrist support than when it’s position is along a seam (as in the Super Air models). It is this feature that makes Top King Empower Boxing Gloves an exceptional choice for wrist support. These can be an ideal glove choice for fighters training repetitive bag work, or those that want additional wrist support. Twins Special BGVL6 is also a great choice for this sort of training. But, please keep in mind that these gloves limit wrist movement and may impact your ability to train clinch, catches, sweeps, etc. Traditional Muay Thai Gloves, like Windy BGVH, would be a better choice for this type of training.

There’s a lot of information to unpack in this Top King glove review. Check out this chart below for a summary:

*As measured on 10oz glove

While Top King Boxing gloves are largely similar, there are some small design differences to be aware of. It all comes down to personal preference; what’s most important to you when choosing a new pair of boxing gloves?