The term “SAMBO” is an acronym of ‘SAM-ozashchita Bez Oruzhiya’, meaning ‘self-defense without weapons’. Putin, the president of Russia, was also a SAMBO player.
SAMBO has been actualized in 1938 as the former USSR Committee of Sports to serve as a common form of sport wrestling for the fifteen different republics of the former Soviet Union, each of which had one or more of its own distinct styles of folk wrestling, with widely varying rules. It was also taught as a form of hand-to-hand combat by Soviet soldiers for use in unarmed self-defense.
In 1984, the International Amateur SAMBO Federation (FIAS) was constituted to govern the sport internationally.