When NHB Vale Tudo first started becoming popular in the early 1990’s fighters would often compete without the use of any glove. At UFC 4 Melton Bowen wore a fingerless glove, but it wasn’t until KO artist Tank Abbott put on the gloves to protect his hands that people really discovered the value of an MMA Glove.

While lots of debates have been made between which strike actually has more force, the bareknuckle punch, the MMA glove, or the boxing glove, few tests have been done on the actually science of the question of does more padding equal more protection for the fighters?

Using an instrumented heavy bag that measures force, National Geographic took former UFC Heavyweight champion Bas Rutten into the gym to have him punch the bag without wearing gloves, wearing MMA gloves, and again with a boxing glove.

The study showed that without a glove, the bare-fist bone-on-bone strike landed almost 370kilos of force, causing the brain to rattle against the skull and could possibly injure the strikers hand.

The MMA gloves are 2CM worth of padding which lessoned the strike to 295kilos, while adding extra protection for the knuckles and hands.

While the boxing glove has many times the padding of MMA gloves, 6CM worth of foam was able to create 290 kilos worth of force…just 5 kilos lighter than the MMA gloves.

While a great test for conversation, the results where all conducted on one day with one fighter, so there is room for hypothesis on the error of measurements. What do you think? Do you think it is possible to punch harder without a glove?