Nelson Mandela.

[Barn]

I didn't know Mandela was a keen boxer back in his youth.

"I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced onself over a match.

Boxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, color, and wealth are irrelevant . . . I never did any real fighting after I entered politics. My main interest was in training; I found the rigorous exercise to be an excellent outlet for tension and stress. After a strenuous workout, I felt both mentally and physically lighter. It was a way of losing myself in something that was not the struggle. After an evening's workout I would wake up the next morning feeling strong and refreshed, ready to take up the fight again."

[NChristo]

Didn't know that .
Idi Amin was a boxer also, Ugandan Light Heavy champ, although he's pretty much the opposite of Mandela as a person.

[JAB5239]

Didn't know that .
Idi Amin was a boxer also, Ugandan Light Heavy champ, although he's pretty much the opposite of Mandela as a person.

Pretty big understatement in my opinion. The guy was a straight up control freak and lost his mind with power and committed heinous atrocities. He was said to be a very good athlete in his youth though.

[ИATAS]

[Kid McCoy]

Didn't know that .
Idi Amin was a boxer also, Ugandan Light Heavy champ, although he's pretty much the opposite of Mandela as a person.

While visiting Uganda Muhammad Ali had an unsettling encounter with Amin:

Amin believed himself adroit in the ring. Ali was the guest of honor in Uganda, and they were having dinner at a long table filled with people: Ali at one end, Amin seated at the other with a dwarf at his side. Ali remembered: "He's feedin' this dwarf soup with a spoon, stops and hollers over the table, bangin' his fist." Guests cowered, the silverware jumped. Amin boomed: "I want to fight the great Muhammad Ali!" "Over and over again," Ali continued. "I get to kiddin'", say he must've had a nightmare. Then, he goes under the table, opens a case and dumps all this cash. Must've been half a million. But I wasn't goin' to count. Then, he say, "You a champion or a coward?" The next thing Ali saw was Amin pointing a gun at him, saying, "Now, what you say, Muhammad Ali?" The dwarf scooted, everyone else dove under the table. "Nobody there now. Just me and him. I'm mad and scared at the same time. I whup this bag of fat and he gonna kill me for sure. Why not? He already kill everybody in the country. It just dead quiet now. Like John Wayne goin' into a saloon. I'm just lookin' at that gun, my heart poundin', then suddenly he drop the cannon right in the soup in front of him, and the soup splashes all over his uniform, his face and them medals, and he lets out a laugh that would chase Satan and his helpers away."

And on Mandela, when Bowe went to South Africa to meet him, the first thing Mandela asked was: "where's Eddie Futch?"