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.
Globally, he had another name. The Butcher of Uganda.
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.
He married six times and fathered around 60 children. Or, rather, that’s how many he acknowledged. Somewhere among all that, belongs Abdul.
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.
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.
That it could come in Glasgow is particularly pertinent.
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.
Some years later, those predilections even spawned an Oscar-winning film, The Last King Of Scotland, starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy.
So what would it mean to Abdul – who goes by the nickname Ringo – to win gold in Glasgow?
“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.
“When I arrived, I put up the flag, ’cause I like Scotland so much.”
