Aziz Abdul never met his grandfather. He was a military dictator and died in exile when little Aziz was a toddler. His name was Idi Amin.<\/p>\n
Globally, he had another name. The Butcher of Uganda. <\/p>\n
Amin took charge of his homeland in a coup in 1971 – becoming the country’s third president – and ran a brutal regime for eight years. It’s estimated half a million people were killed and the country’s entire Asian population were expelled.<\/p>\n
He married six times and fathered around 60 children. Or, rather, that’s how many he acknowledged. Somewhere among all that, belongs Abdul. <\/p>\n
This week, the 25-year-old is one of around 3,000 athletes in Glasgow. Just another face in a tracksuit, here for the Commonwealth Games. But not many others have the lineage that the super-heavyweight boxer does.<\/p>\n
Abdul fights England’s Damar Thomas in the quarter-finals of the 90+kg category on Wednesday, knowing victory will guarantee at least bronze and make him Uganda’s first Commonwealth boxing medallist since Auckland in 1990.<\/p>\n
That it could come in Glasgow is particularly pertinent. <\/p>\n
The despotic Amin harboured a fascination with Scotland after serving in the King’s African Rifles in his 20s. At the height of regime, he was fond of wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes – and even declared himself “King of Scotland” in 1976. <\/p>\n
Some years later, those predilections even spawned an Oscar-winning film, The Last King Of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy.<\/p>\n
So what would it mean to Abdul – who goes by the nickname Ringo – to win gold in Glasgow? <\/p>\n
“In everything we do, God knows tomorrow,” he told BBC Sport Scotland. “It’s God’s plan. I might be the new King of Scotland. It’s possible.<\/p>\n
“When I arrived, I put up the flag, ’cause I like Scotland so much.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aziz Abdul never met his grandfather. He was a military dictator and died in exile when little Aziz…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-829803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}