Sambo Origins and influences The founders of Sambo deliberately sifted through all of the world's martial arts available to them to augment their military's hand-to-hand combat system. One of these men, Vasili Oschepkov, taught judo and karate to elite Red Army forces at the Central Red Army House. He was one of the first foreigners to learn Judo in Japan and had earned his nidan (second degree black belt, out of then five) from judo's founder, Kano Jigoro. Oschepkov used some of Kano's p