Sambo and NYT

[Bob]

New York Times

July 19, 2008
Once-Secret Martial Art Rises in Ring’s Bright Lights
By R.M. SCHNEIDERMAN
It was born in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution and remained largely a state secret until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is called sambo, a Russian acronym that stands for self-defense without weapons, and it is a martial art that combines striking, submissions, throws and weapons disarmament.

Popular in Russia and the former Soviet republics, sambo was relatively unknown in the rest of the world. But over the last five years that has slowly changed in the United States with the increased popularity of mixed martial arts, a sport that counts a number of sambo experts among its elite fighters.

Two such fighters, Fedor Emelianenko and Andrei Arlovski, will participate in a mixed martial arts event Saturday in Anaheim, Calif. Emelianenko, considered by some to be the best fighter in the world, will take on Tim Sylvia, the former heavyweight champion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Arlovski, also a former U.F.C. champ, will square off against Ben Rothwell, an American who has dabbled in sambo.

Sambo originated in the early 1920s as the newly formed Soviet Union attempted to improve the hand-to-hand-combat abilities of the Red Army. Two men, Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oschepkov, studied various martial arts throughout the world — disciplines like karate, judo and Mongolian wrestling — to find the most efficient way to thwart an armed opponent.

They worked independently through the 1930s. But after the Soviet government reportedly killed Oschepkov in 1937 for political reasons, a student of his, Anatoly Kharlampiev — along with students of Spiridonov — began combining their techniques. In 1938, the Soviet government recognized this fusion of teachings as the country’s official combat sport.

“It was a great propaganda piece,” said Dayn DeRose, a longtime sambo practitioner and the owner of South Mountain Martial Arts in Madison, N.J.

“It was a very calculated move by the Russian government to unite the different ethnic groups.”

To make sambo a sport, Soviet officials prohibited striking a competitor, for safety reasons. They also created a new uniform: a modified judo jacket along with shorts and shoes.

After World War II, the sport’s authorities banned choking maneuvers, saying they were impractical on the battlefield. At its core, however, some sambo experts said this rules change reflected a nationalistic impulse: the desire to distance sambo from its resemblance to judo.

Even as sambo was transformed into a sport, the country’s military and secret police continued to practice it without competitive restrictions, a form of the martial art known as combat sambo. This variation includes strikes, chokes and weapons disarmament maneuvers.

Both forms of sambo remained behind the Iron Curtain until the mid-1960s. After Soviets using sambo began competing and succeeding in international judo competitions, the sport version of sambo gained popularity in Europe and Japan.

In the 1970s, sport sambo came to the United States by way of wrestlers and judo experts. And though it initially caught on, by the early 1990s the sport’s growth here had begun to wane because of disagreements among the sport’s organizers and the rising popularity of Brazilian jujitsu.

In 1993, Royce Gracie, a Brazilian jujitsu black belt, dominated the first Ultimate Fighting Championship, despite being the tournament’s smallest competitor. Since then, Brazilian jujitsu has become one of the most popular martial arts in the United States. It is almost universally considered an essential skill set for mixed martial artists even though its moves are largely the same as those of judo and sambo. The three martial arts differ primarily in emphasis, philosophy and competitive rules.

“Maybe I did a better marketing job,” said Rorion Gracie, Royce’s brother and the co-founder of the U.F.C., of the popularity of jujitsu.

Many sambo experts agreed.

“The people coming out of the Soviet Union were trying to find appropriate ways to popularize something in a capitalist world, and that was difficult,” DeRose said.

Sambo has grown over the last five years in the United States because of the popularization of mixed martial arts and the increased access to Russian coaches, said Stephen Koepfer, the head coach of New York Combat Sambo in Manhattan.

Enrollment in national tournaments, which was virtually nonexistent in 2003, has climbed to roughly 100 people, he said. And sambo has gained a reputation for its crushing leg submissions.

In an e-mail interview, Igor Kurinnoy, the head of Club Boretz, a sambo academy in Moscow, said that combat sambo began to spread after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian immigrants like Alexander Barakov, Koepfer’s teacher, brought combat sambo with them to the United States. In 2001, combat sambo became an international sport. Competitors wear headgear, shin pads and a sambo uniform.

Experts say that it is the dominance of fighters like Arlovski and Emelianenko that has been the main factor in the growth of both combat and sport sambo in the United States. More recently, in June, another sambo expert, Amir Sadollah, received considerable attention after he won the U.F.C.’s mixed martial arts reality show “The Ultimate Fighter.”

“Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France and the next day there are twice as many people on bicycles,” said Serge Gerlach, who runs Cali Combat Sambo, a school outside of San Francisco.

“I get that same effect” from Emelianenko, he added.

“Sambo is mixed martial arts,” said David Rudman, the founder of Sambo-70 in Moscow, the sport’s largest academy in the world. “Show me a move and it’s good, we use it.”

Some schools are doing just that. The American Sambo Association, an organization founded by Koepfer and Barakov to promote the sport, has modified the rules to broaden the sport’s appeal. Vladislav Koulikov, a Russian immigrant who owns Ultimate Sambo, a school in upstate New York, implemented a belt system to help attract students.

Some of these inventions may rub traditionalists the wrong way, but not Emelianenko.

“I’m all for it,” he said through an interpreter. “It’s my desire to advance the sport.”

[JAB]

Damnit I looked in yesterdays edition! Is that the whole article Bob? Any nice pics, or can I get the meat and potatoes from what you have shared?
THanks
Jake

[CaliG]

Interesting article thanks for posting it.

From what I've seen of sambo I have to agree that if there's an effective move out there these guys just take it.

They don't do the "that's not how it's classically done... blah, blah, blah."

Instead they retain the way it is classically done and then add variations and modifications to it so that it can be used in a wider variety of situations.

I'm not surprised to see that these guys are doing so well in MMA, because when you good at everything it's hard for your opponent to catch you making mistakes.

Damnit I looked in yesterdays edition! Is that the whole article Bob? Any nice pics, or can I get the meat and potatoes from what you have shared?
THanks
Jake

Here's some meat and potatoes.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=e ... 86b070ddfd

[CaliG]

Speaking of Fedor...



http://www.dailymotion.com/search/fedor ... wnge_sport