Independence, sourcing and updates

Independence

• Picks are chosen and ranked before any affiliate link is built. Commission never changes a ranking.
• Buyer first: if Amazon is not the best place to buy a product — price, stock, warranty — the page says so, even when a different retailer would pay us less or nothing.
• No sponsored placements. No paid reviews. No free or discounted products accepted from any brand or retailer. No brand has ever seen a page before it was published.
• Every earning link is marked #ad with a link to the disclosure, carries rel="sponsored", and goes through our own resolver so the destination can be audited.

Sourcing

• Product specifications come from the manufacturer's published product page, size chart or manual, cited under each product card and in the sources list on every commercial page.
• Where a manufacturer's page is thin, the retailer listing is cited and named as such.
• Any figure — a bag weight, a rated load, a glove weight, a rope length — is either from a cited page or is explicitly labeled a rule of thumb.
• Safety claims — anything about what headgear, a mouthguard or a mount does or does not prevent — must cite a governing-body rule or a peer-reviewed study, or the claim is not made. We cite the USA Boxing National Rule Book and published studies where they apply.
• Forums and social media are used to understand the questions people ask, never cited as authority. Competitor affiliate pages are never cited.
• Wikipedia may be cited for a definition, never for a product claim.

What we never claim

• That we tested a product. We compile published specs and say so on every page — see the methodology.
• A credential the author does not hold. The about page says exactly who writes this.
• A price. Buttons open the live retailer price.
• Medical advice. Pain and safety pages describe common causes and say when to see a doctor.

Scope

Bag & Bell is written for the US market: products sold on Amazon.com, prices in US dollars, sizing in ounces, pounds and inches, and US English. Competition rules cited are USA Boxing's unless stated.

Updates

• Roundups and comparisons: product availability checked quarterly; rankings reviewed quarterly; rewritten at least once a year.
• Sizing, mounting, wrapping and fitting guides: annually, or when a manufacturer's chart or a governing-body rule changes.
• Trust pages: on any policy change, and at least annually.
• A page's “updated” date changes only when the content changes. It is never bumped by a redeploy or a price refresh.

Corrections

Send corrections to mike@blackironathletics.com or through the contact form. Verified corrections are fixed within seven days and noted on the page with the date. We would rather be corrected than wrong.

Who is responsible

Iron Mako Media publishes Bag & Bell and is responsible for everything on it. Mike M. writes it.