UFC gloves are open-fingered, weigh 4 to 6 ounces, and carry far less padding than a boxing glove. That design lets fighters grapple with a gloved hand, but it also means less cushion protects the striker's own knuckles — which is a big reason hand and wrist fractures are one of the most common injuries in the sport, gear and all.
Why the gloves look nothing like boxing gloves
A boxing glove is a padded mitt. Fingers are curled inside it and can't be used for anything except forming a fist. An MMA glove is closer to a fingerless bike glove: an open palm, exposed fingers, and a strip of padding sewn over the knuckles and the back of the hand.
The open-finger design exists because MMA is not a pure striking sport. Fighters need to grip an opponent's gi-less body, wrist, or leg to set up a takedown, hold a clinch, or lock in a submission. A closed boxing mitt makes all of that impossible. The tradeoff is that a hand built for gripping can't carry the same amount of protective foam a boxing glove does — there's less material between a fighter's knuckles and an opponent's skull.
What the current UFC glove actually is
Under the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts — the rulebook state and tribal athletic commissions use to sanction MMA — gloves must weigh at least 4 ounces and generally no more than 6, with the knuckle area required to carry at least an inch of padding. That's the glove that's been standard since fingerless gloves became mandatory in the UFC in 1997.
The UFC actually tried to replace it. In 2024 the promotion introduced a redesigned glove, called 3Eight/5Eight, with new foam layering and repositioned seams meant to reduce eye pokes and cuts. It debuted at UFC 301 and stayed in competition for about five months and 21 events. Fighters, including light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, complained the new shape felt wrong on the hand, and data showed a drop in knockout rate while it was in use. By UFC 309 in November 2024, the promotion scrapped it and went back to the original design permanently. So the glove on every UFC fighter's hand today is the same 4-to-6-ounce, open-fingered, minimally padded glove that's been used for nearly three decades.
What's under the glove: the hand wrap
Before gloves go on, fighters wrap their hands, and the wrap itself is regulated almost as tightly as the glove. Under the Unified Rules, each hand gets soft gauze cloth no longer than 15 yards and no wider than 2 inches, held in place by no more than 10 feet of 1-inch surgeon's tape.
The tape can cross the back of the hand and extend over the knuckles once the hand is clenched into a fist — a small allowance MMA wraps get that boxing wraps generally don't — but it cannot extend past where the glove's wrist opening sits. The point of the wrap is to stabilize the many small bones across the hand and wrist so a full-speed punch doesn't twist or buckle them on impact. It reduces the odds of a break; it doesn't come close to eliminating them.
The inspection every fighter goes through
Wrapping happens in the locker room before the fight, not wherever a fighter chooses. An athletic commission inspector has to be in the room to watch it happen, and so does a representative from the opposing fighter's corner — a rule that exists specifically so no one can hide something illegal, like a wrap stiffened with extra tape or a foreign object, under the gauze. The inspector initials the finished wrap. Gloves don't go on a fighter's hands until that inspector signs off. Any dispute about a wrap — famously including high-profile boxing cases — gets resolved at this stage, before either fighter leaves the locker room.
Why hands still break
Despite the wrap and the glove, hand and wrist injuries remain some of the most common injuries in MMA. The hand is the single most frequently injured part of the body in the sport, and most of those injuries come from throwing strikes, not receiving them — a fighter's own punch is what breaks their own hand.
The classic version is a fracture in the neck of a metacarpal, the long bones that run from the wrist to the knuckles. In boxing this injury is common enough at the pinky-side bone that it's simply called a "boxer's fracture." In MMA, the same type of break shows up more often at the index-finger side of the hand, a difference researchers attribute to how MMA gloves sit on the hand and how MMA strikes are thrown — often at odd angles, against a smaller and harder target area like an elbow or the crown of the skull, and sometimes with a hand that lands awkwardly against the mat during a scramble. A simple metacarpal fracture typically takes six to eight weeks to heal.
The gap between the sports shows up in the injury data. Research comparing fracture rates across striking sports has found fractures make up roughly a quarter of all documented MMA injuries, compared to a much smaller share of injuries in boxing and kickboxing. The gloves are the reason. A boxing glove concentrates several ounces of extra foam directly over the same knuckles an MMA glove protects with barely a third of that padding, so a boxing punch spreads its impact over more material before it reaches bone. An MMA fighter throwing the same punch is hitting with far less between their fist and the target.
The takeaway
The gear MMA fighters wear is a deliberate compromise, not an oversight. Open fingers and thin padding are what make grappling possible in a sport that also includes striking, and that same design is what leaves hand bones more exposed to a full-power punch than a boxer's are. The wrap and the pre-fight inspection cut down on the risk but don't remove it — which is one reason a fighter can look completely fine after a fight and still be nursing a broken hand for the next two months. Next time you're watching a card and a fighter shakes out a hand after landing a clean shot, that's not theater.