Tajik athletes have won four gold medals at the 2021 Asian SAMBO Championships among adults, youth and juniors that took place in the Uzbek capital Tashkent from June 4 to June 6.  

Tajik teams of adults, youth and juniors have won a total of 22 medals, including four gold ones. 

In the team competition of the Tajik youth team has reportedly taken the third place following the teams of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.  

The 2021 Asian SAMBO Championships and the 2021 Asian Youth and Junior SAMBO Championships 2021 will be held in Tashkent from 4 to 6 June.  The best sambists of the continent came to the capital of Uzbekistan to compete for the medals of the tournament.

Sambo is a Soviet martial art and combat sport.  It originated in the Russian SFSR in Soviet Union.  The word "SAMBO" is a portmanteau for samozashchita bez oruzhiya, which literally translates as "self-defense without weapons."  Sambo is relatively modern, since its development began in the early 1920s by the Soviet NKVD and Red Army to improve hand-to-hand combat abilities of the servicemen.  It was intended to be a merger of the most effective techniques of other martial arts.  

Sport sambo is stylistically similar to old time catch wrestling and judo, and in a lot of ways influenced by them, but with some differences in rules, protocol, and uniform.  More akin to catch wrestling, and in contrast with judo, sambo allows various types of leg locks, while not allowing chokeholds.  It also focuses on throwing, ground work and submissions, with very few restrictions on gripping and holds.

Utilized and developed for the military, combat sambo resembles modern mixed martial arts, including forms of striking and grappling.  Combat sambo allows regular punches, kicks, elbows, and knees, as well as soccer kicks, headbutts and groin strikes, in addition to throws, holds, chokes and locks, except for a standing or flying wristbar.