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The most important piece of equipment for a boxer is their boxing gloves. When boxing first started many hundreds of years ago, boxers did not use boxing gloves at all. These boxers were known as gladiators, because they fought with their bare hands, and sometimes these fights ended in death.

However as we became more civilized, we realized that this was too brutal of a way for boxers to fight. At this time boxing gloves were first introduced to help protect a fighter's hands while boxing. These original boxing gloves were called 'mufflers', because they 'muffled' the blow on the fighter's face and hands. However these gloves were not used during matches at first, but only during training. Conventional boxing gloves were not used until much later, but these initial gloves did help to make strides in the protection of boxers.

Conventional boxing gloves fit over the fighter's entire hand, and about four to five inches up their arms. The gloves are one solid piece of leather over your four fingers, and then there is a place for the thumb. However some states in the United States require the use of boxing gloves without thumbs to help prevent eye injuries. These boxing gloves range in weight from 6 to 12 oz, and the heavier the glove, the harder it is to keep them up, but the bigger the blow can be delivered.

Most fighters will also wrap cloth around their hands before they put their boxing gloves on to give their hands more protection. Boxers will also usually have their trainers tape their boxing gloves around the bottom of their wrist to help keep them in place. Sometimes during a boxing match this tape will come loose and the referee will stop the fight so that the tape can be worked on, so that the boxer's opponent will not get hurt by the loose tape.