Sambo Knot

Sambo Knot is a sambo-derived name for the leg entanglement in which both of the opponent’s legs are crossed and controlled in a single configuration — what submission grapplers now call “Game Over” and what 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu has called “Z-lock.”

Etymology. Sambo — SAMozashchita Bez Oruzhiya (“self-defence without weapons”) — developed in the Soviet Union from the 1920s onward and built one of the deepest catalogues of leg-attack mechanics outside Japanese judo. The “knot” naming convention reflects sambo’s mechanical vocabulary: the configuration’s defining property is that the opponent’s two legs are tied against each other rather than against an external structure. Among the disciplines that converged in modern no-gi leg-locking — judo, sambo, catch wrestling — sambo contributed the cleanest framework for crossed-leg control, which is why the term has carried into submission-only vocabularies.

Mechanics. The configuration isolates both of the opponent’s legs by using one as the cross-bar against the other. Neither leg can post, frame, or rotate the knee out of the firing line because each is occupied by the other; the attacker’s inside-space control is shared between attacker hip and opponent leg-on-leg pressure.

Cross-reference. Submission-only contexts use Game Over; 10P uses Z-lock; some catch and folkstyle contexts use Leg Knot. Full mechanical coverage on Game Over.