Probably the most annoying part of the tape is Oleg’s partner. Every time Oleg starts to apply a move, Oleg’s partner just screams and carries on in pain. I thought, maybe Oleg must be really cranking the moves on. However, Oleg appeared to be surprised by the incessant squealing by his partner. Oleg even states once that the move is not supposed to hurt yet. I thought Oleg and his partner where reenacting a scene from the movie "Deliverance." Any moment I thought Oleg would turn to his partner and say ‘You sure do got a pretty mouth . . . NOW you just drop them drawers." You would have thought that at the end of the day of filming they would have reviewed what they had shot and dropped Oleg’s partner from the tape like yesterday’s trash. The guy couldn’t even take the fall for all the moves (i.e Kata-guruma).
The editing of this tape must have been done by a blind man. One second you are watching a move and the next you have "Judo" Gene LeBell ranting incoherently about how wonderful Oleg is and the fact that LeBell searched everywhere for Oleg and even had to go to another "dimension" to find him. I am not making this up, really!! Honestly, I am not. The poor editing might have something to do with the "good Russian Vodka" that LeBell makes reference to wanting. I wonder if it is possible to smoke vodka.
The moves on this tape have very little explanation and only one camera angle is shown. Most moves are shown just once. But hey, that’s what the rewind button is for I guess. To finish the tape in fine style Oleg has some fight footage of himself. What at first appears to be serious NHB fights actually turn out to be WWF style tag team wrestling matches.
Furthermore, after watching this tape I am not sure what the difference between Military and Sport Sambo is. There is nothing on this tape that remotely looks like something you would use against an armed enemy during a war. All of the moves on this tape look more like something you might use in a tournament, depending on the rules. I also did not see anything that looked very secret. Unless the Military Sambo people store all their secret moves in the Judo books I have on my shelf at home (come to think of it, that would be very sneaky). (It is interesting to note that the WWW ad for this tape has the title of the tape as "Secret Combat Sambo Training Video.")
I can only wonder what possessed Oleg, who could write his own ticket, to hook-up with amateurs to produce his video.
Another troublesome point is the number of moves on this tape. I am usually very forgiving with these count numbers. As long as the ad’s claimed number of moves is roughly what my count is, I am happy. The Black Belt ad claims that there are over 45 techniques on this tape. This is 10 more than the 35 that I counted. You can play all sorts of games when you count the number of moves and subtle variations. So 45 moves was OK with me. However, the WWW ad for this tape claims that the tape has "over 65 techniques and more that 30 leg locks." Oleg’s tape must be one of the most amazing technological breakthroughs since the invention of "spray on" hair. A video tape that actually can grow in size. Then again, maybe there was some truth to Gene LeBell’s reference to his ability to travel in other dimensions of time and space in order to add techniques. But then I had to ask myself why these guy would be bothering to put out a shoddy tape like this if they had the ability to clean-up on long term, high interest loans through the use of time travel (not to mention the stock market). The tape really has only 12 leg locks. But if you are feeling the effects of the "good Russian vodka" and you are seeing double, maybe it looks more like 30 leg locks. I would not have a problem with their move count if they add the following warning in their ad:
| *Warning: Oleg not included, not all moves available everywhere, some
restrictions might apply, vodka sold separately, batteries not included, your move count may vary based on your ability to count. |
|---|
Now that I have gotten that out of my system. Let’s talk about what they did right on this tape. The tape is divided into 5 parts: (1) Throws, (2) Chokes, (3) Armlocks, (4) Leg Locks and (5) Oleg "In Action." Oleg goes through 5 or 6 moves in each category until he get to leg locks where he does about 12 moves. The tape contains quite a few moves in its 50 minutes. Each move is shown semi-slow-mo speed and then explained briefly once and Oleg moves on. The moves range from very basic to exotic.
The leg lock portion has a few moves that could be useful. The problem with Oleg’s sparse explanations is that fact that people will watch this tape and try and imitate Oleg’s moves. This can have disastrous results for people who don’t have an instructor and are leaning from tapes like this one. To prove my point just take a look at the end of Oleg’s take. Oleg has a women demo a few moves that he has shown her. The women ends up in juji-gatame with her feet crossed (without trapping the far arm in-between her feet). She does a pretty good job of imitating Oleg. I could see someone who is learning from this tape doing the move just like this. Oleg’s Spartan explanation of the basics of the juji-gatame position fails to mention the importance of trapping the far arm in-between your feet (If you cross your feet without trapping the far arm, your opponent will be out of your arm lock before your can say "crappy tape.")
Oleg of course, had the far arm trapped. However, the viewer only sees, like most moves, the position once. Oleg just states that your feet should be crossed. The securing the arm is not mentioned by Oleg, it is only implied by the fact that this time he has the arm between his feet. On the rest of the tape Oleg does juji-gatame without crossing his feet. As a result, the viewer is not sure if Oleg is trapping the far arm on purpose or by accident. If you really like crossing your feet when you do juji-gatame, watch the Mike Swain Ne-waza tapes. Swain goes does a world class job explaining every detail of this position.
Oh yea, did I forget to mention the positive aspects of this tape. The tape does have a nice opening with shots of Oleg fighting in the UFC. Moreover, the tape does have some nice graphics that float in telling you that this is the "choke" section. The set used for filming was nicer than most. Oleg has a nice sadistic smile. :-)
To recap, this a very mediocre tape. It is hard to rank this tape with the other tapes that I have reviewed. I don’t like ranking amateurs with professionals. Hopefully, Oleg will learn from this tape and correct the plethora of shortcomings in his future tapes. This might have be a decent tape if the material was explained better, with multiple camera angles, more rehearsing, and a less annoying opponent. Most of the problems with this tape appear to stem from the fact that they tried to do too much in too short a space. Next time let Curly direct, let Moe do the post production and Larry can take all the falls.
As a side note, I wish Oleg luck in his upcoming bout with Renzo Gracie. This should be good fight.