[Fozzy]

Okay, I was supposed to do this months and months ago, but I've been swamped with alot of stuff going on with my personal life, women, injuries, work, family. It's all been a bit too much. I pride myself as one of the most active reviewers of this board, and I guaranteed to review these atleast 5 times, but they kept getting bumped back on my priority list, which I must appologise to ClinchGear for. They were nice enough to give me the oppourtunity to review these excellent shorts and I feel like I robbed them. So Please forgive me, and here is your review.

While I am writing appologisees, here is one to TruthMMA as well. I will be reviewing your shorts as soon as I am finished writing this one. My deepest appologisees to both of these excellent companies who I have delayed the reviews of.

----

Clinch Gear.com - Fight Shorts



Okay where to begin with these excellent shorts. I'll now be breaking my reviews down 5 into sections:

Stitching
Closure
Style
Extension
Prolonged Use

Stitching

Stitching on the Clinch Gear original short holds up suprisingly well. These shorts can be used for prolonged amounts of times without the stitching come loose or weakend during grappling use. After being washed what must of been atleast 50 times since acquiring these shorts, the stitching holds together fine. As you can see from the below picture, they are tripple stitched, much like most grappling shorts (including SPRAWL). There are no stitching problems with these shorts, as compared to my HCK's which after about 3 months the stitching became a bit fuddy and I had to get some of the loose ends pinned down.



As you can see, the stitching is triple stitched, and pinned down very strongly. These will not break. Proof? Go watch any of the recent Dan Henderson fights in Pride. He was wearing Clinch Gear. ;)

Closure

OMG, Okay I haven't seen the new Sprawl's and I have yet to acquire a pair of the Inspirit Spec Model, but MY GOD, this is by far one of the best closure's for grappling shorts on the market. Looking at the picture below, you have 3 velcros to fasten before the shorts are closed.

Here is the 3 images to explain:

Step 1


Step 2


Step 3 - Closed


These have never come loose and the velcro is still strong (and worse possible scenario you can have the velcro replaced by a seamstress for a cheap price ;) but you won't have to!)

[Fozzy]

Style

I sometimes get weird / funny looks when I stop by Red Rooster on the way home from training, while I'm wearin fight shorrts and a shirt. But Clinch Gear's shorts are far from unfashionable. Yeah I realise you probably won't be buying the shorts for their sex appeal, (barring those "I want the Sexy Vitor Belfort shorts!!" nuthuggers) but these look fine for outdoors use. You could wear these to the beach and not get any odd looks. The black and white work well in a contrasting nature.

Here is an overall pic of the shorts:



Like I said, looks cool to me.

Extension

Ofcourse if you are looking to buy fight shorts, you need to know that they will stretch with your extensions (i.e. for highkicking, and ofcourse guard work). Clinch Gear's shorts have a very strange but effective stretch panel on the bottom / crotch area of the shorts which works fantastic in guard work. (See Pic) The panel stretches quite well when you are extending for armbars fromg guard, or SPRAWLing out of things (pun intended).



It looks crazy but works just as well as the stretch panels on my Sprawl Flexfighter XT's (2005's I have yet to be able to review the new 2006 models, but that review will be coming as soon as I get them)

The panels on the sides of the shorts also stretch, different to say other shorts where the panel is on the underbelly (stretching from one side of your inner thigh - across your crotch - to the other thigh) these shorts have the panels on the outers of each leg which works to give extension.



Prolonged Use

These have been used for atleast 5 months non-stop now, for grappling, running, muay thai, and they hold up fine after all this rigourous work, and washing, so there is no problems here.

There is nothing else I can say, but I highly recommend these shorts for anyone wishing to experiment, I ofcourse always recommend Sprawl, as they are my personal favourites, but if you don't like Sprawl, or want to try something different, these should be on my list

The only knock I have against Clinch Gear is they don't have large enough hip sizes to accomodate to the average HW and SHW. But that's not their fault, I'd just like to see more shorts past the 38inch mark. Other than that, awesome shorts, awesome people to deal with.

Stay tuned, will be writing the Truth MMA review in the next 2 hours. Gotta eat for now.

Comments and Question are welcomed, HQ pics are available on demand.

~Foz

www.clinchgear.com

[sir037]

Good stuff, thanks for the review. Hopefully they'll make the shorts available in bigger sizes in the near future.

[Adino]

Great review Foz. Definitally all the detail I would ever imagine needing to make an informed purchase. Appreciated.

[Fozzy]

No problems guys, i was meaning to do it ages ago.

Unfortunately since I reormatted my PC i forgot to save the TruthMMA pics, so I'll be using stock photos of them until I get a chance to re-photograph them.

Review will be up tommorow midday

~FOz

[Fozzy]

ttt

[SSF]

Once again Foz great job.

www.SSFgear.com

[Fozzy]

thanks dude. I was gonna post the TruthMMA straight away (for anyone wondering) but I need to get pics, and:

a) my friend has them, and is using them, and;

b) my camera is dead.

so I'm postponing it till I can get a and b sorted.

~Foz

[Tommy-Sambo]

those have one of the better closers I've seen so far.

[Freedom-fighter]

class review, they've only just come available in the uk so the review is right on time for us.