For nearly all combat sports & striking sports such as Muay Thai & Boxing hand wraps provide essential wrist support under the boxing gloves. Professional strikers use good quality hand wraps to weave in-between their fingers & thumb with a large portion of the wrap doubling up on the face of the knuckles & always anchoring back to the wrist. With correct punching/striking technique always regarded as the highest priority, effective hand wraps partnered with a well weighted boxing glove such as 14oz or 16oz plus knuckle protectors will provide maximum protection. For general fitness bag hitters, it could be argued that it's even more important to have knuckle protectors under your hand wraps as the impact of a heavy bag is so much more constant than that of a professional boxer who in reality does less bag work and more sparring, speed work. The addition of protective equipment accessories such as knuckle protectors are a very smart investment & protect far more than regular speed wraps. Hand wraps are 100% essential Paul Rose from TTF has wrapped more hands than most people would do in a lifetime, watch his hand wrap video here. https://www.ttfkickboxing.com/membersapp
Muay Thai Fighters & Boxers
As mentioned above the professional boxing & fight purists often don't do as much bag work as what you may think. Remember they have other things like speed, strength & road work to focus on not to mention sparring. They also use tape and gauze to wrap which is a completely different art in itself and a topic to cover in a seperate post, but you can watch how the great Freddie Roach does hand wraps by following this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I87jPq5WurY. Freddie has won boxing coach of the year multiple times.
Boxing accessories - knuckle protectors
So you've got great hand wraps & good weighted gloves but what are knuckle protectors? They are a sponge like padding similar to that of a surfers wet suit material. They provide a cushion like feel absorb upto 30% of the impact when boxing, great for heavy bag hitters. These are placed 50/50 over the top & bottom of the largest knuckles on the hand first & then the wraps go over the top. The benefit of doing it this way is that the wraps really help to lock in the knuckle protectors and prevent them slipping.