Combat Sambo

Combat Sambo is the striking, full-contact branch of Soviet sambo, whose name is an abbreviation of the Russian phrase "samozashchita bez oruzhiya", meaning self-defense without a weapon. While sport sambo is a purely grappling art, the combat form adds punches, kicks, knee and elbow strikes and defense against an armed attacker to throws, joint locks and ground control; bouts are fought in protective gear including a helmet and gloves. Its roots lie in two independent lines that later merged. Viktor Spiridonov (1883-1943), a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War, built on jujutsu and European wrestling and worked within the Dynamo sports society; he was the one who first used the name sambo for his system. Vasili Oshchepkov (1893-1937) was born on Sakhalin, lived in Japan from 1908 to 1926, and earned second dan at the Kodokan in 1913; he promoted his own version as training for the Red Army. In 1937 he was falsely accused of spying for Japan and died in prison at the age of forty-four. After 1938 his student Anatoly Kharlampiev carried the work forward, becoming chief instructor for the NKVD in 1945. Sambo was recognized as a sport by the All-Union Committee in 1946, and the split into a sporting and a combat branch falls in the late nineteen-forties and early nineteen-fifties; the exact date the combat form emerged cannot be established, so that field is left blank.

Similar styles

Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.

Pankration MMA Vale Tudo Shooto Pancrase (Hybrid Wrestling)Kudo