"In 2017 Managua will host the Central American Games and the 2015 Pan American Sambo Championship. Working Group thought it would be really interesting for our local Olympic Committee to see this event and then to support its entry as a discipline into the Central American Games," he said.
Perez added that "with the rise of martial arts, sambo has become very popular" in several countries of the continent and in Nicaragua itself. However, he admitted that there is still much work to do to include the discipline in the Olympics.
More than 200 athletes and coaches from 24 countries of the continent will participate in the 2015 Pan American Sambo Championship to be held on September 3-7 at the University of Managua.
Sambo was founded in the 1920s by Soviet soldiers as a merger of elements of judo and various wrestling styles. Its name derives from a Russian military acronym for “self-defense without weapons."
