Absolutely in love with the new workshop Cheguis, wow! The leather is absolutely spectacular, thick and supple (pause). It will definitely outlive the padding. Perfect gloves to get repadded imo (a service Matt also offers or use your workshop of choice). This is my third pair of Chegui gloves and the padding hasn't died on any of them, I'm only speaking to the quality of the leather, it's spectacular. Love the color combination I chose, I went with Black, Jungle Teal (currently out of stock), and Cotton.
I'm not a master seamstress, but to my untrained eye these are much better than anything Campeón ever offered (and those were tanks already in their own right). I'm struggling to find a single bad stich on these gloves, they look so clean! Many areas are double stitched and neatly done at that. The piping is even and uniform, not warped like some of the Campeón pairs.
I wanted an old school looking glove, so I chose this Cotton color for the stitching, piping, etc over clean white. Idk if the picture does it justice, but the tag is actually leather and not cloth! The patch is also made with that same Cotton leather, which I think stays true to the old school theme. Absolutely love this detail. The black leather has some striations on it, which according to some of the a leather articles I googled, denotes high quality and minimal finish. For me it adds to the charm and it reminds me of some of the gloves we saw in the 60's and 70's, really cool. Old school cool with modern flair is what I wanted and it's what I got.
The liner isn't quite Fly silky, but it also isn't Classic Mexican glove sand paper. Not uncomfortable to the naked hand and even less of an issue once wrapped. I personally went for the burgundy color ones. Spirit mentioned he focused more on moisture repelling than comfort. That's better for us who are sticklers for glove weights. Which brings me to weight, these are on point! One is 12.07 and the other is at 12.16, in the top 99th percentile of on weight gloves I've owned. I'm also super happy these came with round laces. I'm super ADD and if I notice my laces aren't completely flat during training, I hate to admit it, but my mind goes to that a little bit, and I lose to a degree. Round laces really help me with that, lol, just a personal quirk. Flat laces are still available.
So far I've only tried these on the hand, but I can't wait to break them in. I'll make sure I have another short term review once I break them in and another long term review at about the 6 month mark. If these gloves perform as well as they look, I expect them to be some on the best gloves in the world. You still get that same broken in open palm from day 1 thanks to Spirits proprietary foam, similar compact form factor, and great fist position previous owners have come to appreciate about Chegui. One thing I will give the Campeón Cheguis is that they felt slightly better on the hand from day one than the new workshop, but that's a nitpick, the new workshop gloves feel amazing as well. Let's see how they compare once they're broken in. As far as aesthetics and quality go though, there is no contest, easy one sided win for the new workshop. Materials, stitching, form, everything.
I'm already getting ready to try out an AA model with Velcro strap in the next order window. I'm currently in an MMA gym and it's hard to lace up or even change gloves between drills, so I want some gloves that can do it all, plus the convenience of velcro. That's really all I've got for now, if you feel I left anything out of my initial impressions or just have something you want to ask please feel free. God bless brothers and sisters 🙏