The Greatest Sambo Fighters of All Time

A short history of Sambo

Sambo is a Russian acronym meaning "self-defence without weapons". It grew out of efforts in the early 1920s to improve the Soviet Red Army's hand-to-hand combat. Vasili Oshchepkov, who had studied judo in Japan under its founder Kanō Jigorō, and Viktor Spiridonov, a wrestler whose war wound pushed him toward a softer, less strength-dependent method, developed separate systems that later merged as their students cross-trained.

Oshchepkov died in the purges of 1937, and his student Anatoly Kharlampiev steered the new sport to official status: the USSR sports committee recognized it on 16 November 1938, which the international federation still treats as sambo's birth date. The first tournament followed in Leningrad in 1939, and the name sambo became official in 1947.

Sambo went international during the Cold War. FILA, the world wrestling body, recognized it in 1966, the first European championship was held in Riga in 1972, and the first world championship took place in Tehran in 1973 with athletes from 11 countries. In 1984 a FILA assembly decided to create an independent federation, FIAS. A popular story says sambo was a demonstration sport at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but it never formally was.

Today there are two main forms. Sport sambo is jacket wrestling built on throws, pins and leg locks, without chokes; combat sambo adds strikes and chokes, and FIAS held its first combat sambo world championships in 2001. The International Olympic Committee gave FIAS provisional recognition in 2018 and full recognition in 2021, though sambo is not on the Olympic program. Combat sambo world champions Fedor Emelianenko and Khabib Nurmagomedov carried its methods to the top of MMA.

• ✦Sport sambo allows throws, pins and arm and leg locks, but no chokeholds.
• ✦A total victory ends the bout early, for example a clean throw of a standing opponent onto their back, or a submission.
• ✦Otherwise points decide: a throw scores according to how the opponent lands and whether the thrower stays on their feet.
• ✦Adult bouts last five minutes; competitors wear a red or blue kurtka jacket, shorts and sambo shoes.
• ✦Combat sambo adds punches, kicks, knees, elbows and headbutts, plus chokes, with gloves and headgear.