Here it is, a very special moment for me. An opportunity to review one of the unicorn guns of my earlier years. A gun so rare as to necessitate finding a clone of one as I’ve still never seen the real deal. I’m talking about the very short lived and polarizing handgun known as the HK USP Match.
Back in the day littler me was heavily inspired by some of the more dramatic black and white pictures found in books like the Shooter’s Bible and Gun Trader’s Guide. The AMT Automag series. The Laseraim and Safari Arms 1911s. The Sig Sport trinity with their giant frame mounted compensators. And the big beautiful monster which was the USP Match. I’ve waited nearly thirty years to get my hands on one of these. Even if it isn’t 100% genuine I’ll take what I can get, though this one does get real close.
Trying to pin down the exact production of the Match series is not easy. The USP came out around 1993 and the Match supposedly ended somewhere in 1999, though I have read rumors to suggest a few more might have been made as far out as 2004. Old stock being put into limited runs, maybe? The story from what I had been able to gather came from competition shooters at the time taking an interest in the USP and wanting a fancier version for sport shooting. HK didn’t have a follow-up act lined up to meet this demand and their means of answering the call is not exactly unique, target .22 pistols have had the option of longer barrels and front end weights for some time. Giving this treatment to an already huge combat pistol, however… That might have actually been unique.
What makes a Match different from a standard USP? It starts with the barrel. Rather than go through the trouble of making a new slide profile HK simply dropped a 6″ (or 6.02″ if you want to be super specific) barrel into a standard USP then milled out a giant block of steel to shroud the crazy overhang. Adjustable sights got tossed into the dovetails and a tuned factory trigger got thrown into the frame. 9mm models also had a “Jet mag funnel” for extended mags and quicker reloads but the .45s never received this treatment. The barrel also has an O ring for better fitment with the slide just like the Mark 23, a feature which has continued to be sprinkled across the HK pistol lineup ever since. The Match’s barrel seems to share the same length as the USP Elite but there’s a key difference in where the groove is cut for the O-ring. Take note if you’re looking to build a clone of your own.
And, that’s it. Better sights, better trigger, longer barrel, and a giant piece of metal bolted onto the accessory rail. All this with a very expensive price tag to match (zing!) Not the most elegant of solutions, hence the polarizing view of these guns. To some they’re ugly and poorly balanced. They’re difficult to bring onto target because most of the weight is focused far out in front of the slide. The weight does help quite a lot for rapid fire but if you need to transition from target to target or be on the move this weight works against you more than it helps.
But for the other side? The USP Match is pure iconic 90’s. The Match has made it into games such as Half-Life 2 and the recently released Stalker 2. They were memorable sidearms in Blade 2, the first two Tomb Raider movies, and the first Underworld film. They have a presence, and it’s easy to see why. The profile of a .45 caliber pistol almost the same size as a Desert Eagle, complete with a match weight giving it an exotic sci-fi vibe, was (if you’ll pardon another pun) unmatched in its day. Even now it’s quite rare to find this feature in a pistol because it’s far better to simply make a longer slide and benefit from a longer sight radius or to add a compensator onto a threaded barrel. Having a barrel weight is a very old school way to help tame recoil, but darnit if it doesn’t still work.
The example I have to play with here is close to a faithful clone with a few minor differences. Aftermarket match length barrels can be had but if you look around, get lucky, and don’t mind throwing a crud ton of money at one, you can get an authentic HK branded barrel. Full polygonal rifling, cannon-grade cold hammer forged steel, the works. And get this, the barrel procured for this one has the same date code as the pistol itself. A 2024 production run! They can occasionally be found in 9mm and .40 S&W as well even though to my knowledge HK only ever made 9mm and .45 options from the factory with the 9mm in particular being even more rare in America.
I am aware of two versions of the factory match weight with subtle differences in the finish, font, and mass. The front of the factory 9mm and .40 weights are also slightly longer which apparently is not copied with the cloned match weights from IMM Holdings so these barrels will be slightly longer than the weight while the .45’s barrel is only a hair longer. Original weights came in somewhere around 12.3 to 13 ounces depending on the caliber, slightly heavier than the IMM Holdings clone weight. Not to be outdone, the IMM weight can also be had with a Picatinny rail which should add a little more mass to it and give you somewhere to throw a flashlight on for maximum compensation.
Oh, a quick note here. IMM makes the clone match weights in both steel and aluminum. If you want to go as clone correct as possible then you want the steel.
What makes this clone different besides a non-standard weight is the addition of a Gray Guns short reset system which can be made to play nicely with the factory HK match trigger kit, a Dawson Precision fiber optic front sight, and a custom refinished slide for that amazing two-toned stainless look which used to be a factory option. The Match came standard with LPA steel adjustable sights but aiming with black on black irons is not a good time, hence the Dawson. Their “.350 x .125″ wide ramped serrated” should be what you need for proper alignment. For the slide this one wears the “CPII” plating from Cummins Custom out of Greeneville, Tennessee, described as an electroless nickel / boron nitride which is shiny and very, very slippery. No problems with racking the slide though. Having nickel content it does have a warmer buttery tint compared to the cooler blue of stainless but it still does an amazing job of making a Match clone pop. No one else is going to notice.
With all put together my impressions of the USP Match is that despite having an extra 12+ ounces hanging way out at the business end it doesn’t feel grossly front heavy. Much to my surprise it felt far better than expected, even with an empty mag! The twice upgraded trigger is …better… The single action pull and reset is honestly pretty freaking good but the double action pull is still long, heavy, and has that slightly creepy plasticy feel. I kept pulling and pulling and felt like my finger was going to hit the frame so much it wouldn’t have any more space to travel and THEN the hammer dropped. Not a good time! This is still very much a 90’s trigger. Keep it in single action and you will be much happier.
At 30 feet I loaded up the first mag with ten rounds just to keep it nice and tidy and proceeded to throw all ten rounds through the same hole on paper. Yeah, she be accurate! I did some basic testing at increasingly further distances while switching between single and double action and found a definitive pattern emerging. The gun tracks side to side VERY well but between the weight and my struggles and anticipation of hammer fall on double action I was dipping those shots low which caused a lot of vertical stringing. Single action continued to cluster them into a tidy ragged hole.
The recoil impulse is …odd. Odd in that I find myself noticing extra “steps” which I normally would not. Once it felt like the shorter secondary recoil spring engaged, but not on every shot despite using the same ammo. As the slide comes forward there’s another slight hitch when it meets the O-ring. It all still feels smooth but it can be a little unpredictable, there’s more going on here than with your typical handgun and sooner or later you’re going to feel these oddities at the range. This said, it wasn’t ever jarring. It kind of reminds me of a 9mm USP Elite I got to play with a little about ten years ago, that one also had a peculiar recoil impulse. Chalk it up to USP life, I suppose.
In short order I also came to realize the USP Match is a whole lot of gun. It still has the giant grip. It’s still huge. But now it’s huger and has even more weight! I can see why the Match was so short lived and was replaced with the longer slide Expert and Elite models. The weight may be archaic in comparison but I don’t care, it’s an absolute icon. For me, it still feels like a pretty good match.
The puns are almost over, promise. C’mon, you got this!
So, hey. You know how the .45 ACP can be kind of a dirty round? Like you run a box through your pistol and the front of your gun is black, regardless of how it started out? Yeah, that’s still a thing with the USP Match. On one hand the front of the slide will look nice and pretty but you won’t see it around the carbon-caked blast shield which is the front face of the match weight. The barrel will also be coated. As will the inside of the weight. Shoot it long enough and I wouldn’t be surprised if those fins at the bottom would also take on an extra layer. Be prepared to do some cleaning and watch what you brush that match weight against, it might come back looking like it had a fight with a chimney.
In this regard the IMM weight may be superior to the factory weights which had a sort of bumpy textured coating and red “HK” lettering on the front, all there to help collect gunk. The IMM weight is a nice smooth flat surface which wipes down like a breeze.
A note for collectors here, legitimate USP Matches will have matching serial numbers. Thanks to the range of dates they were produced I believe all of them will also come with ten round limited magazines, though obviously you can’t trust this detail as much. My understanding is that the more “authentic” magazines will have flat baseplates too, but again this isn’t an accurate way to know for sure. Original HK branded match weights do spring up on auction sites sometimes so don’t let the weight be your guide. I think HK made a lot more weights than what they ended up using.
It’s a real shame the USP Match didn’t last long but I can understand why it didn’t. The weight is another twin screw obstacle for field stripping the USP and it’s not as “clean” as having a longer slide, but in the few years it existed it left quite the impression on a lot of younger shooters. Nowadays in particular the Match is not a practical gun. It’s not the most comfortable gun due to the added weight, though the recoil impulse on the .45 is sublime. They’re massively huge, like something out of a comic or a Schwarzenegger flick.
But. If you know, you know. Nothing else can replace the look of a USP Match, and building one up yourself is still far easier and more affordable than finding a used one on auction. At the time of writing there is only one USP Match on Gunbroker, a two-toned .45 with a starting bid of $3,500. A week before it started at an even four grand! For that money you can find the parts yourself and build up a stock USP without worrying about affecting any collector value and have cash left over for spare parts or ammo.
They’re big. They’re expensive. But the HK USP is the unmatched mother of the matches.
You can stop groaning, I’m done now.
