Sambo Biography

Great historical footage of sambo training, matches and matches against Japan. There is even footage of the reknown sambo coach David Rudman! It's all in Russian but worth a watch, especially for you grappling fans.

Sambo: How to Do a Georgia Combo in Sambo Martial Arts

I thought this is a really nice knee to throw combo. This will be useful in sanda. Hip throws are illegal in Muay Thai so its applications there is limited.

Russian Uranage throw

I got away with doing a very similar throw to this in one of my Muay Thai matches. I think as long as long as you don't do a full back arch and put more emphasis on the horizontal twist, the ref wil let you get away with it.

It's a good uncommon technique to use in the Muay Thai clinch, especially when you end up at your opponent's side and you have underhooks.

Back Flip Wrestling Move

Amazing counter to a single leg! The wrestler does a back flip and straight into a takedown when landing. What crazy skills! And this looks like a high school wrestling match. Apparently this is not that uncommon in wrestling after seeing all the other backflip counters to the single leg on youtube. I am constantly amazed at the athleticism of wrestlers. Makes me wish there was a wrestling program in my school instead of Taekwondo or Karate.

Judo: Isao Okano vs Russian

Isao Okano is a famous Japanese Judo champion. Here is a clip of him going up against Boris Mishenko. This took place during the time the Russians just entered the judo scene.

The Russians in Judo were famous for their unorthodox style, due to their background of Sambo, a Russian jacket wrestling style.

Arm and leg submissions are a specialty of Sambo. Here the great Isao Okano is caught off guard by his Russian opponent via armbar.

Sambo training in Japan

This is Sambo training in Japan by a coach named Hagihara. I don't much about the coach but the training looks really solid and top notch. Alot of the warm up drills are the same if not very similar to wrestling. Though these drills are mainly found in wrestling or grappling schools I think they will be beneficial to any styles . Body coordination, flexibility, breakfalling, these are some of the things off the top of my head that can be developed through this.

You guys can see we do some of these drills in sanshou training but they have some really acrobatic ones here that we don't do. Given the time I would love to try and learn them. The exercises look really fun and I'd like to master them before I'm too old!

Combat Sambo training at Red Devil Club (Fedor's gym)

This is Fedor's gym, the Red Devil Club in Russia. It's a Sambo and MMA gym, hence you see the guys in sambo jackets, guys with mma shorts and gloves, padwork training, etc. I really like Sambo as its Combat Sambo variant seen here intergrates strikes with grappling, making it a good all round style especially to transition into MMA. No wonder Fedor is the world top heavyweight MMA fighter at the moment.

Sambo in the NY Times!

Some of you guys might know that I love all good martial arts. I have a strong interest in grappling before but decided to focus on striking for the last couple of years, thus training solely in san shou at first then muay thai. One of the grappling styles that I have a strong interest in is Sambo. It's a Russian style of jacket wrestling. It's similar to judo but they wear shorts instead, can do leg submissions and have alot more wrestling influence instead. Sambo is not all wrestling though. They also can include striking and one of their competition formats that allow strikes is called Combat Sambo which is basically MMA. Anyway there is a new article introducing Sambo in the NY Times! I can't believe the NY Times did a martial arts article. Awesome! Have a read and enjoy.

Sambo in NY Times

Mongolian wrestling

We were talking about the Sanda champion Baoligao which I posted a clip of him against a Muay Thai fighter earlier in my blog. I mentioned Baoligao is very different to the typical Sanda fighter in that he is very power orientated and particularly very strong in the clinch. This is because he is not ethnic Han Chinese (the group most Chinese belong to) but rather ethnic Mongolian. Mongolians have a very strong wrestling culture as is typical of all horse nomad tribes. They were brought up on wrestling. Even today wrestling champions are well respected and can earn a good living in Mongolia.

Every year in Mongolia they have what they call the naadam festival where they have archey, horse riding and wrestling competition. Above is a footage of the wrestling competition. The rules are no ground wrestling, first one to touch the ground loses with three points of the body loses, there are no rounds and no weight divisions. They were the special costumes reminiscent of the undergarment the Mongolians used to wear as calvary warriors. You may have seen the Mongolians in these costumes during the Olympic ceremonies as they walk in. If not, look up for it. They always make people's heads turn!

In north China, wrestling is or was a strong tradition. Mongolian wrestling is considered one of the four main branches of Chinese wrestling.

Judo - Efficiency

Nice clip of various judo takedowns and throws done in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). When I was only doing kungfu my strong point was throws. It's always good to know a few throws as it can really throw (pun intended) your opponent's game off if he's not used to it or he doesn't know how to breakfall. I always try to do one or two big throws (the legal muay thai style ones) in my matches.