- Islam Makhachev now calls Combat Sambo tougher than MMA, pointing to the headbutts and unpredictability that the unified rules strip out.
- His sharper jab is takedown-first: he argues Jiu-Jitsu never trains the entries needed to actually use its ground game in a fight.
- The comments came as he and Fedor Emelianenko were honored at the 50th World SAMBO Championships in Tashkent.
- The counter-record is real: BJJ athletes lead Sambo champions 3-0 in ONE Championship, and even Gordon Ryan only rates Sambo higher “for MMA rules.”
What Makhachev Actually Said at the 50th World SAMBO Championships
Islam Makhachev arrived at the 50th World SAMBO Championships in Tashkent to collect an honor and left having reignited grappling’s oldest style war. On November 5, FIAS president Vasily Shestakov presented the reigning UFC lightweight champion and Fedor Emelianenko with Letters of Credentials naming them SAMBO Ambassadors to the World, at the press conference marking the start of the milestone tournament, which ran November 6–8.
Secondary coverage also reported both men receiving SAMBO Grandmaster titles, with Emelianenko handed a watch for his 50th birthday and Makhachev presented the Russian Honoured Master of Sport in SAMBO badge.
Asked to make the case for his base art, Makhachev did not hold back.
I would say Combat Sambo is even tougher than MMA, because you can take a grip and your opponent can unexpectedly deliver a headbutt.
– Islam Makhachev –
His critique of Jiu-Jitsu was more specific than the usual “Sambo beats BJJ” soundbite, and aimed at a structural gap rather than any athlete.
To even begin doing Jiu-Jitsu moves in a match, you need to take your opponent down. But they don’t have that skill, because all the training in Jiu-Jitsu is on the ground.
– Islam Makhachev –
He put the same point in blunter terms.
There are a lot of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athletes. I wouldn’t want to offend anyone, but I would say the sport isn’t as effective for MMA.
– Islam Makhachev –
Why “Combat Sambo Tougher Than MMA” Is the Claim That Stands Out
The escalation worth owning is not another “Sambo beats BJJ” line; it is the claim that Combat Sambo is harder than the sport Makhachev already rules. The reasoning is concrete: in a standing grip exchange, an opponent can headbutt you, and the Combat Sambo rules back it up.
FIAS’s rulebook permits blows with the head — front, side, or back — in the standing position provided both athletes wear helmets, banning head strikes to the head only in the ground position for men. Unified MMA rules make headbutts illegal everywhere.
He backed it with a story of an opponent’s corner admitting, after a bout, that they had prepared only for leg sweeps, throws, and hooks — never for him striking from the feet.
The Takedown-First Critique — and What It Gets Right About BJJ’s MMA Gap
The harsher half of his message is the takedown-first critique, and it is worth not waving away. Sport Jiu-Jitsu genuinely spends most of its training on the floor, and its ruleset rewards guard-pulling in a way MMA does not. Plenty of sport schools turn out athletes who are devastating once a match hits the ground and ordinary at getting it there — a rule set doing what rule sets do.
Makhachev has made this point before, more crudely — in 2022 he argued the sport needed to “cancel” many black belts. The newer version is sharper because it is structural: he is not saying Jiu-Jitsu athletes are soft, but that their sport never forces them to build the standing entries MMA demands.
Islam Makhachev clowns on BJJ while attending Sambo world championship
by u/No_Chemistry_7889 in submissionfighting
Where the Argument Falls Apart: the BJJ Counter-Record
If the question is whether Sambo is better than BJJ for MMA, the honest answer is that the head-to-head evidence is thin, and the cleanest data we have runs the other way. In ONE Championship’s submission-grappling matchups, BJJ athletes put up a 3-0 record over Sambo champions, capped by Danielle Kelly’s rear-naked choke of Sambo champion Mariia Molchanova, following wins from Kade Ruotolo and Rodrigo Marello.
Even the most famous “Sambo is better” voice in Jiu-Jitsu never claimed what Makhachev is claiming. Gordon Ryan’s much-quoted agreement was narrowly framed: Sambo wrestlers are better equipped for an MMA rule set because they control pace and finish on top, against opponents who were not, in his words, world-level MMA-focused Jiu-Jitsu. It was an argument about MMA rules, not a verdict on the arts.
The feud keeps running — Fedor Emelianenko spent late 2025 demanding a Craig Jones apology after Makhachev’s UFC 322 win — but it runs on anecdotes, not a settled score. For every Dagestani champion there are elite Jiu-Jitsu athletes who made the MMA jump, from Garry Tonon in ONE Championship to Kron Gracie and Rodolfo Vieira in the UFC.
What a BJJ Practitioner Should Actually Take from Combat Sambo
Strip the ceremony and the hot takes, and the useful lesson is small and practical. The real difference between Sambo and BJJ is not “better” or “worse” but what each sport optimizes for. Combat Sambo builds standup-to-ground connectivity, grip exchanges under the threat of strikes, and takedowns as a default; sport BJJ builds a guard game and submission depth that the Sambo rule set, with its short mat time, simply does not develop.
For a practitioner who wants MMA or self-defense relevance, the fix is boring and effective: add takedowns, train standing grips as if a strike or a headbutt could come, and stop letting guard-pulling be plan A. For a pure sport player, none of this threatens the art — the “Combat Sambo tougher than MMA” claim describes a different contest with different rules, not a hierarchy of skills.
