Media Volk's coach disses Sambo

[jackleeb]

is this guy related to Jon Jones? big if true

 

[Safton]

There's typically a bit of truth in what he says even when he trolls though. I mean, if you think of it this way: what will people train at to get best at submission grappling? BJJ, not sambo. what will people train at to get best at trips? Judo, not sambo. What will people train at to get best at wrestling?...wrestling, not sambo.

Sambo arguably isn't the best at any one aspect of mma, and if a fighter wants to get good at something for mma, he is likely not to go to sambo. There is a reason why the best sambo guys in the ufc also have BJJ coaches and wrestling coaches, but the best BJJ and wrestling guys don't have sambo coaches.

So asking what sambo's role actually is in mma is a decent question. It would be nice to hear craig have a more serious discussion about it sometime, but I doubt he will while coaching against a sambo guy.

Oh no I fully agree that a lot of his trolling is usually done with a point in mind and/or a degree of retrospection that I respect. I'm just saying that people tend to take it way more seriously and at a greater degree of knee-jerk face value than I think even Jones himself even intends at times lol.

As for Sambo's utility in MMA and the question of training, I don't think it's any secret that every competitor seeks out specialists when looking to improve their skill in a given field. That shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise. For my two cents, where Sambo shines isn't as a specific skill an MMA athlete excels in after the fact to get better at a given area of MMA, it's as a potential foundation for MMA that allows them to come into the sport with an extant understanding of the transitions and in-betweens. If you took a highly-decorated Combat Sambist and a highly-decorated D1 wrestler who had maybe dabbled in Golden Gloves/amateur MT or whatever and then they both crossed over into MMA, I would expect the former athlete to have a generally better starting point when it came to understanding of the "flow" of MMA in regards to striking-to-grappling transitions (and vice versa), pace, etc. especially once he got used to the lack of jacket. Furthermore, we also see in Eurasia many MMA athletes with Sambo backgrounds who -- even after making the jump -- continue to occasionally compete on the Sambo/Pankration/Kudo circuit, essentially treating these sports like free amateur bouts that have a moderate degree of fidelity to MMA but won't affect their pro record.

There are obviously many exceptions to the above, but that's how I see it. Sambo won't make you world-class in any one area on its own, but it can and often does turn out very serviceable and well-rounded athletes who tend to have a decent understanding of the MMA meta from the get-go. Sometimes that makes for unremarkable fighters who lack any sort of "X factor" and have some exploitable holes as they progress, other times you get brick walls who seem competent and polished across the board once they get their groove going and seek out the aforementioned specialists.

 

[fortheo]

Craig is a known troll, I don't know why people take him seriously. He was talking like this before the first Islam vs Volk fight, too. He even shaved his moustache to be more like Dagestanis <45>

I appreciate his humor, but I guess he's not for everyone. I don't understand getting upset over it though.

Oh no I fully agree that a lot of his trolling is usually done with a point in mind and/or a degree of retrospection that I respect. I'm just saying that people tend to take it way more seriously and at a greater degree of knee-jerk face value than I think even Jones himself even intends at times lol.

As for Sambo's utility in MMA and the question of training, I don't think it's any secret that every competitor seeks out specialists when seeking to improve their skill in a given field. That shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise. For my two cents, where Sambo shines isn't as a skill an MMA athlete shines in after the fact to get better at a specific area of MMA, it's as a potential base for MMA that allows them to come into MMA with an extant understanding of the transitions and in-betweens. If you took a highly-decorated Combat Sambist and a highly-decorated D1 wrestler who had maybe dabbled in Golden Gloves/amateur MT or whatever and then they both crossed over into MMA, I would expect the former athlete to have a generally better starting point when it came to understanding of the "flow" of MMA in regards to striking-to-grappling transitions (and vice versa), pace, etc. especially once he got used to the lack of jacket. Furthermore, we also see in Eurasia many MMA athletes with Sambo backgrounds who -- even after making the jump -- continue to occasionally compete on the Sambo/Pankration circuit, essentially treating it like free amateur bouts that have a moderate degree of fidelity to MMA but won't affect their pro MMA record.

There are obviously many exceptions to the above, but that's how I see it. Sambo won't make you world-class in any one area on its own, but it can and often does turn out very serviceable and well-rounded athletes who tend to have a decent understanding of the MMA meta. Sometimes that makes for unremarkable fighters who lack any sort of "X factor" and have some exploitable holes, other times you get brick walls who seem competent and polished across the board.

Definitely, considering sambo itself is similar to mma, the guys with a sambo do have plenty of experience with the transitions and in between game. Yet at the same time, let's say someone like ian gary wanted to become a more well rounded fighter, is he going to train sambo to become better at transitions between grappling and wrestling? Are sambo guys going to give him the best looks in that facet of the game? I'm not sure.

To me, sambo is a very good base, but something that should be grown out of at the top level, like how khabib eventually got specialized boxing, bjj and wrestling coaches etc etc.

 

[mkt]

That's not entirely true. Sambo is a hybrid that has its historical lineage in other extant martial arts, yes, but so are a lot of other martial arts. Sambo still has/had its own gyms, its own curriculum, and its own unique historical context long before it became a sportive ruleset.

Yeah, from my understanding sambo picked up techniques from wrestling, judo, Japanese JJ, catch wrestling, etc. And it continued to morph I'm sure as NHB/MMA caught on with BJJ being the primary art for submissions.

 

[Elvis.]

 

[wwkirk]

Out of all former MMA fighters, Chael is one of the best trolls!

 

[tastaylvr]

People can watch someone say the same thing for years on end then claim trolling.

 

[Safton]

Definitely, considering sambo itself is similar to mma, the guys with a sambo do have plenty of experience with the transitions and in between game. Yet at the same time, let's say someone like ian gary wanted to become a more well rounded fighter, is he going to train sambo to become better at transitions between grappling and wrestling? Are sambo guys going to give him the best looks in that facet of the game? I'm not sure.

To me, sambo is a very good base, but something that should be grown out of at the top level, like how khabib eventually got specialized boxing, bjj and wrestling coaches etc etc.

Agreed. I don't think it's any mistake that you see fighters as they get their feet wet train with elite competitors or coaches in a specific combat sport or field, whether that be boxing, BJJ, Muay Thai, or wrestling -- and oftentimes they get considerable returns for doing so. You don't see them seeking out "generalized MMA" coaches because there's simply too much material to absorb and the diminishing returns are too immense. There's maybe a handful of techniques that are semi-specific to Sambo in particular I can think of, but I can't ever imagine seeking out a Sambo coach or gym specifically to learn those few for an MMA context.

So I guess I both agree and disagree with Craig's position, or rather I can see both sides of it. I agree because of what we've laid out here and I can 100% understand what Craig is getting at. After all, Islam probably isn't training much pure Sambo in the gym these days. But at the same time I guess I'm forced to ask how does one fully divorce a fighter from his/her roots? It's not disingenuous to say that Sambo played a pivotal role in making Makhachev the mixed martial artist that he is today; regardless of how misguided I find it when someone points at Islam submitting Charles to say something as simplistic as "lul Sambo > BJJ".

Yeah, from my understanding sambo picked up techniques from wrestling, judo, Japanese JJ, catch wrestling, etc. And it continued to morph I'm sure as NHB/MMA caught on with BJJ being the primary art for submissions.

Yeah, off the top of my head Sambo is a pretty holistic hybrid art that in its earliest form(s) was essentially a "grab bag" of techniques and elements from Judo, Greco-Roman wrestling, Western Boxing, Japanese Jujutsu, Catch Wrestling, and various Eurasian regional folk wrestling styles. For some reason or another this has led people to make the argument that Sambo is not a martial art unto itself, but merely a ruleset in which other martial arts exist. This doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, IMO. If their position is that no system which evolved from the parentage of others can be considered its own martial art, then that disqualifies, like... the vast majority of martial arts as we know them, lol -- including Judo, BJJ, various forms of Karate, Taekwondo, etc.

Furthermore, people seem to forget that Sambo was developed initially as a codified combatives system for Red Army troops, border guards, etc. with its own instructors, curriculum, and the like. Hell, technically speaking the name itself should be S.A.M.B.O. -- it's a Russian acronym for "self-defense without weapons". The fact that this combatives system continued to hang around, increase in popular appeal, grow into its own thing, and then spawn various types of sportive rulesets is entirely incidental. I don't think this fact can be used to denigrate Sambo's status as a "true" martial art anymore than one can use the same argument against, say, Karate which itself has generated tons of different sporting rulesets over the years -- some of which look more like kickboxing in practice.

But I digress...

 

[fortheo]

Some of these BJJ guys come across as really insecure about their martial art. Craig Jones sounds like he's parroting Gracie propaganda from the 90s.


https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2023...n-says-alexander-volkanovski-kills-sambo-myth

Craig Jones thinks Alexander Volkanovski puts an end to Sambo at UFC 294.

Volkanovski (26-2 MMA, 13-1 UFC) will step in on less than two weeks’ notice to rematch lightweight champion Islam Makhachev (24-1 MMA, 13-1 UFC) next Saturday, Oct. 21 in Abu Dhabi.

Jones, a multiple-time IBJJF world championship medalist and 2019 ADCC runner up, isn’t sold on Sambo as a martial art, and hopes Volkanovski proves how ineffective it is by beating Makhachev.

“It makes him a man that disproved Sambo, and that will trump his legacy in the sport because we’ve wasted another martial art,” Jones told Submission Radio. “Most martial arts were killed in 1993. Somehow, Sambo has limped and lingered on to 2023. So Volkanovski kills Sambo, and we get to stop hearing about this Russian dancer.”

Jones received criticism for claiming that Makhachev doesn’t have good submissions, and thinks their first fight proved it. Makhachev had more than seven minutes of control time on Volkanovski at UFC 284, but wasn’t able to submit him. He won the fight by unanimous decision.

“The last fight, we spent a ton of time on submission defense,” Jones said. “Obviously, that’s a waste of time because as we learned, Islam doesn’t know any submissions. He just holds on to the back for 20 minutes. This time, we’ll probably get out of the body triangle. There was no submission threat at all, so Volk was just chilling, getting energy back, punching him in the head. This time, we’ll get out of that.”

Makhachev’s mentor Khabib Nurmagomedov once infamously sported a t-shirt which read, “If Sambo was easy, it would be called jiu-jitsu,” but Jones explains why he doesn’t think Sambo really exists.

“We’ve heard about catch wrestling. We’ve heard about Sambo. We’ve never seen it work,” Jones said. “If Islam gets a submission, that’s a jiu-jitsu submission. If he gets a takedown, that’s a judo takedown. If he shoots a double-leg, that’s a wrestling move. So for me, where’s Sambo? Sambo is a myth. It doesn’t exist.”

Lol, from UFC embedded